


A Chain, Two Blades and an Army of You and Me

by Maldoror_Chant



Series: Two Blades Series [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: A twisted kind of love story, Angels still have Powers and Wings, Bad-ass Castiel, Crowley being a smarmy plotting dick, Dark Humor, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, Gallows Humor, Knight of Hell Dean Winchester, M/M, Main Character Death (doesn't stick), Mark of Cain, Suicide (ditto), Violence, Violence as a turn-on, mid-season 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-07 01:11:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 31,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13423551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maldoror_Chant/pseuds/Maldoror_Chant
Summary: Abaddon is back from the dead, and she’s managed to get her exquisitely manicured mitts on powerful magic. She’s kicked Crowley out of Hell and is setting about raising Cain. Literally. Dean only beheaded the bastard one hot minute ago, now he might be back too? Death just isn’t what it used to be...So now Crowley and a reluctant Castiel have to break into Hell to deep six Abaddon. Even though they don’t have the Mark or the set of donkey dentures that goes with it, which is the only thing that can reliably kill the bitch (as Dean is keen to remind them).Dean is not going to let his better half toddle off into Hell all on his feathery lonesome - or with Crowley, which is even worse. Nope, not going to happen. Time for a plan.It’s a typical Winchester plan, aka, ridiculously dangerous, technically suicidal, and Cas and Sam are going to hate it like poison. But it’s a plan.Time to bite the bullet and get the show on the road.





	1. It’s Raining Demons, Hallelujah!

**Author's Note:**

> . Situated some time after Season 10’s Girls Girls Girls. Dean has the Mark and has turned once, and was cured.  
> . There is a divergence from early season 9 however: angels still have power, Naomi and Cas stopped Metatron from booting the Host out of Heaven, angels still have their Wings and Powers. Cas was never human. 
> 
> This fic is reprehensibly full of morbid humor considering it involves eternal damnation, suicide, violence as a turn-on and Crowley being a dick.

Dean maneuvered the cardboard box of canned supplies out of the trunk. Cas was behind him, waiting to grab the last two bags - lighter than Dean’s load, a point Cas had finally learned not to make (Dean knew full well Cas could have carried the entire car’s contents easily and at a much faster pace, but just because the dude was twenty times stronger didn’t mean that Dean was the helpless damsel in this relationship.)

“That the last one?” Sam asked, stepping out of the bunker.

There was a loud Dopplered “Whhhhhaaaaaa!” and then something black and heavy fell from the sky and thumped into the ground between the two brothers.

Dean’s gun was out of its holster and pointing at the target before the box of supplies hit the ground. Cans of spaghetti-os, spam, OJ concentrate and fruit (for Sam) rolled all around. A tube of cookie dough pulled a wheelie that brought it clonking against the new arrival’s shoulder.

Castiel was at Dean’s side the next instant, blade in stabbity-stab position. 

Sam had reached for his own piece- but then switched to his ‘permanently borrowed from a dead mook’ angel blade, either on instinct or because he recognized the prone figure more quickly than Dean did.

The huddled black-clad individual in the faint crater mark at their feet did not seem to warrant that much aggro off the bat. He was groaning piteously and not moving. But of course appearances could be deceiving. Especially when it came to Crowley, currently crowned King of Hell.

Dean took his sights off the target and scratched his head with his released trigger finger. “Huh. How about that. Either of you guys wish real hard upon a star last night?”

“Can we stab him before he recovers?” Sam asked a little plaintively, looking at Dean.

“I can do it,” Cas volunteered, also looking at Dean.

“Hey, you guys want to terminate him, go right ahead,” Dean said a bit hotly. He sounded defensive. Why were they asking _him_? Why did Dean have the final say on whether the King of Hell could keep his spleen inside his body? Why would Dean care?

They were asking him - and he _did_ care, just a bit - because the truth of the matter, the ugly annoying truth, was that he and Crowley had a history together. A history which, like most of humanity’s, was fraught in blood, war, multiple killings and so many reasons for reprisals and revenge it wasn’t even funny. But history nonetheless. And this apparently made Dean, of all people, the voice of reason rather than the gut-punch of violence. Go figure.

Dean sighed and started to point out what the guys already knew, aka, that Crowley was almost as useful alive as he was dead, if not so funny, and really, how many allies did the Winchesters have in final? Even dick allies like this had to count for something.

“Blimey. That was not as fun as I thought it would be,” interrupted a gravelly voice. Apparently Crowley had a mouth full of dirt, or possibly lung.

Dean holstered the weapon - and despite the cries for blood, his brother and his better half had done the same. “Yeah, next time, don’t forget the parachute. I hear they’re all the rage with the kids these days.”

“Uhf. Little hand?”

“How about no.”

“Oh. I’ll just lie here until Abaddon’s lackeys catch up with me on your doorstep then.”

Which was when the day returned to the Winchester’s usual level of FUBAR.

 

\---

 

Crowley shot back Dean’s hooch with perfect poise, as if he didn’t give a damn he was manacled to a chair and also to the table. 

“Ahh, that’s better. Nothing like a shot of paint-thinner in the morning.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Sorry it’s not your usual poison, I don’t have any of your mom’s porridge around.”

“Low blow, Winchester, low blow,” said Crowley with a heavy look over the rim of the glass. “Leave a man’s mother out of it.”

“When it’s Rowena, with pleasure,” Sam muttered from where he was glaring at Crowley across the large central table with its world map and warning lights. They’d checked, but no major power manifestation had shown up since they’d left the bunker this morning. According to Crowley, Abaddon was cleaning house in Hell, so this lack of Defcon signals was normal. The map didn’t go down that deep.

“Spill. Abaddon. Back. How,” Dean ground out.

“Ahh, good question. Your guess is as good as mine- or probably better.” Crowley leaned back like he was making himself at home. They should have put him in the dungeon instead of relying on devil trap cuffs. But they wanted to keep an eye on things here as well as talk to the bitch. 

“Why the hell would we know?”

“Because when it comes to treating death like an inconvenience rather than a final stop, I’m the only one at this table who hasn’t come back from that particular merry-go-round ride multiple times, correct?” Crowley said, looking into his glass as if he hoped it would refill automatically. “Feathers here has a frequent flier card, I understand.”

“That would hardly apply to a creature like Abaddon,” Castiel said. He was standing right next to Crowley’s shoulder as if he was ready to let loose a smite on principle the moment the demon so much as sneezed. Nobody here liked Crowley, of course, that was a given, but Cas seemed particularly ready to nuke first and ask questions later. Crowley had screwed the angel over a few times, but that wasn’t his biggest crime in Castiel’s book. That was not the reason Cas was one second away from knifing the King of Hell in the back. 

Dean found himself rubbing the Mark beneath his shirt and stopped before anybody else could notice the gesture. 

“Does it matter how she’s back?” he said. As far as he could tell, Death had long ago given up His traditional game of chess for a wildcat version of snakes and ladders. Dean wasn’t even surprised anymore. “The point is more, how do we get close to her again to-“

“Not so fast, Dean. Are we really sure she’s back?” Sam asked slowly, eyes narrowed on Crowley. Sam hated his guts just as much as Cas did and for much the same reason.

“Do you think I hurled myself out of Hell on a spell and a prayer for the fun of it?” Crowley snapped. “And aimed for here of all places? She’s taken over the Pit. She did catch me somewhat off guard - and those Knights of Hell types are a little bit better at the old rough and tumble. Fortunately I have a few tricks up my sleeve. I was able to execute an elegant and well-timed retreat to-”

“You oiled out of there like a greased weasel,” Dean interpreted.

”- to come and consolidate a united front here. And I’m afraid that _how_ she was raised does matter, my boys. Because she has threatened to raise Cain the same way-“

_“What?!”_

“- and now I perceive I have your undivided attention.”

“But-...” Sam’s stare went from Crowley to Cas to Dean, looking for somebody to talk him back to sanity. “But that’s nuts! Cain wants to kill her!”

“Oh, everybody wants to kill her, the point is more that Cain actually can,” Crowley corrected. “But she claims she can control him. She told me all about it while she was strutting around my throne room - you know how prone to soliloquy she is.” 

“Oh yeah,” said Dean, rubbing his eyes.

“She says she can apply a seal of, ah, ‘Ephesian’ to him and make him do her bidding, which just fills me with little goosebumps all over.”

That sounded as fun as a barrel full of monkeys infected with Ebola. “...Can she?”

“No idea. Here, Feathers, can you make this out?”

Castiel directed a frowny face at the paper Crowley had taken from a pocket and waved at him. It was covered in magical symbols.

“While she was talking I stole her notes. Well, not _her_ notes. Her notes would read ‘Dean Winchester die!’ written ten thousand times in Scarlet Houri lipstick. Unfortunately these notes are from a demon who is actually useful, a Father Pelagio Calvo.”

“A _Father_?” Sam asked, looking aghast.

“That’s what he was called when he was alive, yes. He’s been one of ours for hundreds of years now.”

“Why is this demon so important?” Dean queried.

Crowley’s eyes shifted back to his glass, which was still empty. “I had him doing various...research projects. On spells of all kinds. He must have stumbled upon a demon resurrection spell in his studies.”

“Huh uh?”

“And unfortunately if there is a guy who could and would have raised Abaddon, it’d be this idiot.”

“Why would he do that?”

“When he was alive, he was the father confessor and whipping boy - literally - of this lovely damsel in 17th century Chile - La Quintrala I believe they called her, because she was a gorgeous flaming red-head with a taste for using the lash-“

“Yeah, say no more. I get the picture and I want to keep my breakfast,” Dean grumbled.

“She got him into alchemy, black magic and sex orgies, which is not something they taught him back in the seminary. Once he got dead, damned and demonized, he kept his interest in studying the occult as well as his predilection for red-heads . Turns out he’s got a knack for taking apart occult practices unchanged for millennia and putting them together in new and interesting shapes. For instance, he’s the one who gave me the idea to melt down angel blades into bullets. He’s the heart of my R and D department.”

“Where is he now?” Dean asked, because this was a demon who needed to die yesterday by the sound of it.

“No idea. Probably dead, or she’d have had him there instead of his notes. I can imagine he raised her, got handsy and died one second later. But the harm is done. The whole Cain coming back under Abaddon’s control? Not as impossible as I’d like it.”

“This seal...” Cas had been staring at the paper while Crowley was talking. “I think...it could work.”

“Great,” grunted Dean. “What does it do, exactly?”

“It gives you control over the demon on which it is branded.” 

A thoughtful silence ensued. Three pairs of eyes turned on Crowley.

“Nice, Some allies you are,” he sneered. “You do remember that I am helping you voluntarily? You don’t need to coerce me. Anyway it’s not really that useful, which is why it’d been forgotten for so long until the dear Father dug it up and had a brainwave. You see, the seal forces cooperation on the demon on which it’s affixed, if I understand it right. On the demon, not its meat-suit.”

Dean drew his old friend the demon killing knife and thoughtfully thumbed its edge.

“That’s still carving a dead horse, boy. That thing’s good, but it can’t cut smoke.”

“Yeah? Then how about Cain?” Sam asked.

“That’s the thing. The one trick Cain can’t pull off as a demon is smoking out, since that’s his body he’s riding - assuming that’s what the ginger from hell is bringing back, and it’d have to be or what would be the point. Any other demon - such as my own cherished person - well...”

“He’s right,” said Cas.

Crowley smiled.

“We’d have to carve the seal into the demon’s original bones for it to take.”

Crowley lost the smile.

“Volunteer, here, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Dean waved away the demonic whining. “So...ideas? Abaddon’s in Hell, but she usually doesn’t stay there. Can we lure her out? Won’t she come after you if you strut around, Crowley?”

“We can try this,” Crowley said slowly, eyes hooded and concerned. “But...”

“But?”

“But you weren’t there when she was talking. How can I put this. Cain is...something of an obsession for ginger.”

“Oh god, she’s got the hots for him?” Sam groaned.

“And there was the second mental image I really didn’t want this morning,” Dean muttered into his hand. 

“I could be wrong. I really do hope I’m wrong. But I’m afraid that the only thing that will come after me for now is a small army of demons, those she can find who are more afraid of her than of me.“

“Great, most of Hell, then,” muttered Sam.

“You wound me-“

“That can so be arranged.”

“And you are incorrect.” For a small man cuffed to a chair banished at the far end of the map table near New Zealand, Crowley did radiate a certain amount of steely self confidence. You had to give the demony bitch that much. “Right now Hell is in considerable flux. They remember what happened last time they backed Ann of Hells Gables. I...cleaned house afterwards. It was not very pretty, though the hellhounds were very well fed for a few weeks. No, right now she has some devotees who’ve crawled out of the woodworks, but the rest of Hell is waiting to see which way the wind blows. This might also be why she’s raising Cain, and not just the hormones. That’s what she’d need to swing the balance. Cain on a leash? Crikey, even I’d be tempted to give up and go retire somewhere. Preferably Mars.”

Crowley pointed an inexorable finger at Dean. “And since she knows you have the Mark and that I have the First Blade, and that we’ve once again joined forces...no, I do not think we will be able to play on her overconfidence this time. She won’t fall for a noon shootout at O.K. Corral, or even a four o’clock tea at Brighton. She’ll stay in the Pit - where only half our current pitiful force of four can even go - and there she will stay until Cain is raised and Hell is at her command. Then she’ll come for all of us. Then she’ll kill us.”

There was a moment of silence around the table. Then Crowley reached out and clinked his glass on the map’s hard surface somewhere near the Asian continent.

Dean went and helped himself to a beer, and dropped off the bottle of rye near Crowley’s elbow in passing. Sam gestured for a beer too, which showed how bad things had gotten since it was only ten in the morning. The only one who didn’t reach for the anesthetic was Cas, because there was not enough booze in the bunker and because he was still being a wonderful constructive angel. 

“I need to go and consult Heaven on this,” he said gravely. “Ask if they think Cain can be raised. And what they propose to do about it if it happens.”

“Say hi for me,” said Crowley, staring into the liquid amber in his glass.

Castiel vanished without deigning to comment.

He was back thirty seconds later. Because angel.

“Did you talk to Naomi?” Dean asked, lowering his bottle.

Castiel nodded grimly. “I explained the situation, yes, and asked her to provide Heaven’s assistance.”

“And?”

“She laughed. A lot. I have never heard her do that before. It was uncomfortable.”

“Typical,” Dean muttered, sending the beer cap rocketing in the rough direction of the garbage.

“But that’s insane!” Sam interjected. “She can’t possibly want Abaddon and Cain back, can she?”

Cas looked calm, but Dean could tell the depth of anger and disappointment crawling around his angel’s craw. “She doesn’t like the idea, no. But if it does? A power struggle in Hell ends up with another ruler - but not one that can threaten Heaven as Lucifer can. Cain can’t either. He’ll probably go on a killing spree, murdering millions of humans over a matter of centuries...but most of them deserve it in Naomi’s eyes, or if they do not, then it’s more souls in the ranks of Heaven.” 

Sam swore like a sailor on a shore leave that just got canceled.

“I pointed out that the first thing Cain will do - with or without Abaddon’s control - is to come after Dean and kill him this time, along with Sam, Crowley and myself. Naomi said-“

“Let me guess,” Crowley interjected, eyes fixed on Australia. “She said, ‘Oooh, bonus!’”

“In essence.”

Dean said a few choice words about Naomi under his breath, mind spinning along dwindling options.

Cas still didn’t look all that angry; it took a lot to get that engine going after all. “It’s shortsighted of her, but I can see her point. Heaven’s ranks are depleted after Metatron’s attempted coup and the infighting that followed. Naomi is not going to risk a single angel’s life on a venture into Hell to destroy Abaddon. That is,” he amended in a steady, deliberate tone, “she is risking one angel’s life, but no more.”

Dean lifted his head slowly. “What was that?”

 

\---

 

“Look,” Crowley said, figuratively stepping into the line of fire. “Can I just interject something?”

“Shut up, Crowley.” Dean was standing. His chair had fallen back when he’d surged to his feet. Castiel was standing on the other side of the table near Crowley. He looked calm but there was a holy stubborn look in his eyes that Dean knew all too well. 

Sam, for one, was being quiet in his corner since the vicious argument had started a few minutes ago. Crowley had not taken the hint. His manacles clinked as he gestured.

“I admire your ‘damn the torpedoes’ attitude, Dean, and I would love to have you and your little knife on our side in this crazy endeavor. But you’re wasting your time yelling at your better half for ditching you. What choice does he have? I sealed that back door in from Purgatory ages ago after Samantha here waltzed into Hell-“

“Bite me, Crowley,”

“I’ll give you a nibble later, sweetheart, we’ve got more important matters to deal with now. That door was hardly ideal anyway, but now it’s done and locked. This is _Hell_ we’re talking about, boys. A demon can slip in, an angel can break in, humans can only go down the hard way.”

Dean didn’t even glance at him. His eyes were fixed on Castiel’s. 

“We _promised_ ,” he hissed - mouthed, really, because just saying it out loud made it sound like they’d been braiding bracelets together at the time - but still, they had _promised_ they wouldn’t pull stupid-ass stunts without each other’s backup anymore. Not after the last _dozen times!_

“Dean, this has to be done. If it was just Abaddon, I’d let her come to us. Or rule in hell forever if she wanted to.”

(“Why thank you,” said Crowley in the background.)

“But I cannot stop Cain, nobody can, except-”

“Yeah, except _me._ ”

“And now he knows what you’re capable of,” said Cas, looking even more stubborn. “I will not let him rise.”

“And if he’s already up and stretching his legs?!”

“Then I promise I won’t engage. I’ll come back here and we’ll regroup. But if there’s any way I can stop him from rising, I have to-”

“This is _loco!_ ” Dean shouted. “How many angels did it take to get me out of the Pit? Hundreds? How many _died?!_ You said you laid siege to the place for ages- and now you want to invade it with your army of _one?!_ ”

“That would be useless,” Cas said calmly. “An invasion would fail. But a targeted strike might succeed.” He nodded a bare micron at Crowley. “We have inside information. If Crowley can get me to Abaddon discreetly-“

“But can you even kill her?! She’s immune to most-“

Castiel tipped his head and gave Dean a look, a nice look, like a nuke politely asking if it could join the party and blow everything to kingdom come.

“We do know she’s afraid of angels,” Sam pointed out a little timidly.

“I don’t know if I can kill her,” Castiel admitted. “That might require Archangel levels of power. But I can certainly destroy her current vessel, injure her and send her running for cover before she raises the father of murder.” 

“If she hasn’t already,” Dean ground out.

“I still have my spies in place,” Crowley interjected. “He’s not up and about yet. It seems Abaddon either ex-ed the good Father too soon, or else his research on how to raise Cain body _et all_ was not complete, because right now she’s lit a brand new fire in Hell to get a bunch of weird books found. She says the raising of Cain and the complete takeover of everything everywhere will happen ‘Soon’ once she has those. I think we have a margin. And I think you’re right, Feathers, I’d rather nip this one in the bud.”

“You just want your throne back,” Dean snapped.

“Shut up, Squirrel, the super-powered non-humans are talking,” Crowley sneered, eyes still on Castiel. 

Dean’s fingernails scored marks into his palm as his fists knotted even tighter. It was hard to resist bashing Crowley at the best of times, now the Mark was turning his peripheral vision red. He took a deep breath and stared at his angel instead. “Cas. We _promised._ ”

That earned him an unhappy look but no relenting.

Sam coughed. “Crowley, I’m walking you back to your room, and I want you to tell me which books Abaddon is looking for.”

“Ooh, a room! Do I get Kevin’s old bunk? Does it still smell like him? Or am I having a sleepover with you, Moose?”

“By room I meant the dungeon.”

“Of course you did. Bloody ingrates.”

This left Dean and Cas staring at each other. Dean appreciated his brother’s leaving them room to talk, but there wasn’t going to be any talking, there wasn’t any point. 

“I need to go meet with some angels,” Cas said, looking away. “They owe me a favor after Metatron. Naomi won’t let them come down to Hell with me, but I can put them at the Gates. They might be able to help.”

“You do that,” said Dean, staring at Canada and trying not to get mad at it.

 

\---

 

Sam came back while Dean was trying to determine if the bottle of Jack was half full or half empty, a philosophical question for the ages.

“Go easy on that,” Sam said softly. “We can’t go with them, but there’s stuff to do. I’m researching those books Abaddon wants. We might have some traction there.”

“Right. I’m going to sit in a fucking library while Cas goes to hell alone.”

“Not alone, with the help of the king of the place.”

“While Cas goes to hell alone once Crowley gets spooked and dumps his ass. I say we let Cain climb out of the Pit and meet him on our own turf. I took him once-“

“Barely.”

“- I will take him down again.”

“You took him down because you had help from the three of us,” Sam pointed out softly. 

“Exactly why Cas - and Crowley - should not go and get themselves killed.”

“You had our help, and Cain knows this, so next time he comes he’ll make sure the three of us are dead first. And he’ll have Abaddon and all of Hell’s demons to help him do just that. You like those odds?”

Dean had nothing much to say to that.

“I’m going to go look these up. If we’re lucky, they’re right here in our archives. Crowley has a lead on some super rare tomes, but according to him, they’re hidden in what is left of the Tower of Babel, deep underground. He says it’s warded against both demons and angels, so Abaddon is shit out of luck, while Crowley hopes he can tag-team it with Cas. Humans optional, but might come in handy, so I’ll go with them.”

“Huh-uh.”

“You coming with us when we leave?”

“Sure. Why not. I can hold the fucking door.”

“Don’t be like that.” Sam squeezed his shoulder in passing and headed towards the library stacks. 

Dean stared at the bottle. Half empty or half full?

Dean stared at the ceiling. Then at the floor. Then he said, “Like hell, Cas.”

The Jack Daniels hit the wall at terminal velocity, solving that problem, and Dean got up to solve the other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic is 99% complete, so should come out with a new chapter every other day. 11 chapters in all, the other chapters being on average smaller (this is just the setup...and we all know what Dean’s solution is going to be - pretty typical Winchester solution all told.)


	2. A Typical Winchester Solution, All Told

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: for suicide - no real surprise, right? - and Crowley POV (so totally inappropriate levels of humor and dickishness)

Crowley smoothed out his coat, ignoring the clink of manacles. Sam had insisted Crowley be chained up again once he had helped them negotiate the Library of Doom. Naturally Castiel had been 100% behind this notion. The Winchesters - all three of them - had such ridiculous problems understanding the subtle strength of alliances. Oh well, if they were so keen on the kinky powerplay, Crowley thought with an inner leer, might as well indulge them.

Sam opened the bunker’s door and let Crowley in with a look of reluctance. Castiel followed a few feet behind them, carrying the box. It had been hell to acquire - and Crowley was a connoisseur in the matter - but they had gotten it out of its ancient well-guarded crypt. It was the size of a large sea-faring chest and it was lined with, oh, probably three inches of lead at least, which was why the angel was the designated beast of burden. Sam couldn’t even lift up one end of it, and Crowley didn’t want to put creases in his suit. Now that Red was back from the dead, who knew how long it would take before Crowley could get his favorite tailor back on retinue?

“Are you sure this is what we are looking for?” Sam groused, following Crowley closely and looking at him with heartwarming suspicion. “Why would someone keep books in a lead lined container?”

“You’re adorable.”

Sam scowled.

“He’s right, Sam,” said Castiel gravely.

“You see, even the angel thinks so.”

“I was referring to the books. The markings on the box indicate these are the tomes we need,” Castiel elaborated. “And the kind of knowledge they contain would require lead-lining and wards to avoid accidental dimensional tears.”

“So you don’t think he’s adorable?” Crowley tsked.

The angel got that constipated look on his face as he redirected his attention at Sam’s back again “No. I didn’t mean that. I do think you’re-“

“Cas, he’s messing with you, ignore him,” said the big spoilsport over his shoulder.

They were heading down the stairs towards the library’s nerve center. Crowley’s demon senses twitched.

“Smells like a distillery in here. Didn’t Squirrel say he’d cop out on helping us because he had shit to do?”

“Yes, he does,” said Sam loyally. “Research.”

“Huh-uh, and what was he researching, new cocktails? Bloody hell, that’s just wonderful. Good job, Winchester,” Crowley added, taking in the scene. The empty bottle and the broken bottle, the sprawled figure snoozing on the table-

An almighty crash sounded behind them. Crowley and Sam spun around.

The heavy lead-lined box had made a god-awful mess of the hardwood floor. Castiel was standing above it, hands still out as if he was grasping the handles, but his eyes were fixed on the scene before him. His expression...Crowley had a hard time reading Feathers at times, but even he could pick up on the sheer level of Something’s Gone Tits Up from the way the air crackled, Castiel’s eyes veered to neon blue and the color drained from his face.

Almost reluctantly, Crowley looked back. Felt pretty sure Sam was doing the same.

Dean was slumped onto the table, head cradled in one arm, the other outstretched-...

Arm outstretched with...manacles on his wrists?

Fingers splayed out. And a small syringe on the table nearby.

And he was as white in the face as the angel. That was kind of a big clue as well. That and the lack of breathing that the demon could now pick up.

Well damn. What do you know.

“Dean?!” Sam shouted, hurrying to his side.

He started shaking his brother, for all the good that would do. Crowley followed and put a finger on the outstretched wrist, wasn’t startled to not find a pulse, did note that Dean was still warm. But a glance back at the angel shut down the possibility of resuscitation. Castiel was just standing there instead of doling out heavenly CPR, so it was probably too late.

Crowley picked up the syringe, gave its needle a sniff, then noticed two more objects on the table: a pencil and a piece of paper. He picked up and examined the latter.

“No. _No!_ Why- Cas?! Cas, can you heal him?!” Sam (late to the party) asked in a strangled voice, looking back at the angel.

Cas shook his head once.

“Oh god...”

“Well,” said Crowley after a minute of silence (it seemed appropriate) “On the plus side, he’s just increased our chances by fifty percent. At least.”

Sam stared at him, and then his eyes went hard and dangerous as he figured out what Crowley meant.

“Here.” Crowley waved the piece of paper at him through the restrictions of his own cuffs. “As suicide notes go, this has to be among the top ten most helpful. ‘Sammy, Cas, don’t panic, we’ve done this before. Please beg a favor from the ravishingly handsome devil I should never have let get away, Crowley King of Hell-’ “

Sam strode over and ripped the note out of his fingers. He smoothed it out and read, voice trembling.

“’Sammy, Cas, don’t panic, we’ve done this before. Get that asshole Crowley to fetch the blade from where he’s hidden it. I have drawn a pint of my own sauce, it’s in the fridge, don’t go sticking me with any old crap now. Unless you run out. Then it’s O neg, just make sure I don’t get herpes.’ Oh Dean, you can’t get-” Sam’s voice choked, a sob dressed in a laugh’s flayed skin. “Right. Never mind. ‘I have a confess-’...”

His voice trailed off and his eyes flickered shut briefly. Then he took a breath. “It says, ‘I have a confession to make, Sam, I should have told you before, but a lot of that screaming and wailing I did the first time you cured me was to mess with your head. Sorry. Don’t worry about it. Shoot me up once we get this whole clusterfuck fixed and gag me for the duration, that’s an order.’”

Sam narrowed his eyes. “It’s getting scribbled. Worse than before. ‘You guys are...back? Not-’ “

Crowley glanced at the note around Moose’s shoulder (he couldn’t look over that unless he had a ladder), eyes running over the rest of the message.

You guys are back.   not going to stop  
Cas we promised   sorry  
don’t let the bastard give you shit  
see you soon  
Dean

Silence once Sam had bumbled through to the end.

Castiel was still oddly silent. Crowley had expected wailing and ashes and much rending of trench coats.

“But...this is insane.”

“He just mainlined 10 ccs of kill juice, Moose, insane is a word for it. If he’d come to me, I could have at least provided him with some decent cheese. Why not blaze down Ozzy Osbourne Highway rather than pull a Kevorkian donut?”

“Dean is dead either way,” said Sam, about to cry big ungulate tears as his eyes stayed fixed on his brother.

“So’s Ozzy.”

Sam rubbed his reddened nose on his sleeve. “Ozzy Osbourne...? He’s not dead...”

Crowley shrugged. “Shows what you know.”

“Urgh, shut up, Crowley. What I mean is - why?! It’s not like we can control him when he turns!”

“...That is a fair point,” Crowley said, vaguely reluctant. “I’ve spent hundreds of years getting demons of all stripes to do my smallest bidding, but the only time I ever got your brother to go right was to say ‘left’. I don’t think that’s going to work down there. I-...what?”

Castiel had finally moved. He’d raised his hand and had been pointing at Dean’s chest for the past ten seconds.

Crowley and Sam shared a faintly worried glance - a first, surely, but anybody would feel concerned when standing next to a celestial Being who’d finally snapped his elastic.

Castiel kept pointing for a few seconds, then he moved forward, straightened the body up as if he was handling furniture - Crowley’s eyebrows twitched - and pulled down a corner of the black t-shirt Dean had been wearing under the usual flannel armor.

“How did you know that was there?” Crowley asked, craning his neck and examining the elaborate seal. Dean had drawn it on in sharpie. He must have done it in a mirror, but to Crowley’s professional eye it still looked remarkably correct.

The angel was silent. He seemed to be staring at the way Dean’s head had tipped back in the chair, like the head of a dead rabbit hanging over the butcher’s block, massively uncomfortable if he’d been anything other than a doornail.

“Cas?” Sam’s voice was cracking in stress. He’d looked away as soon as Castiel had moved his brother, only glancing back fleetingly to see the seal. “How did you know that was there?”

Castiel opened his mouth, but seemed to swap the first consonant he’d been about to use for another. His voice was rustier than usual when he finally said: “Your brother is many things. But he is not stupid.”

Crowley scratched his chin. “Damn. That might actually work.” He didn’t want it to be obvious, but he was fairly impressed with the whelp’s determination.

“Work? It’s not going to _work!_ ” Sam bellowed. “We’re going to strap him to a chair and cure him _now!_ I mean, once he-...well...”

“Now hang on, Moose-“

_“Shup up! We are not leaving him like this!”_

“He wanted to help-“

Sam wound up and punched Crowley straight in the nose - the usual level of Winchester repartee.

The fist swung back again- but Castiel caught it in an uncompromising grip.

“Sam. Stop.”

Sam snarled and turned away. He glared at nothing for a minute and nobody said anything, especially not Dean. But the Winchesters were nothing if not resilient and used to bouncing back from disasters (came from all the practice). Sam turned back to Crowley with a glare.

“Okay. So we need the Blade, right? Or will he turn without it?”

“He won’t need it to turn,” Castiel said. “But he will need it to kill Abaddon.”

Sam made a wobbly punched-in-the-solar-plexus ‘What?’ sound.

Castiel just gave him a look. He was good at those.

“You are not serious.”

Castiel gave him a double helping of look, perhaps in the hope that this time it would get through.

“You- how can you-” Sam looked like he was about to whale on the angel now, which Crowley wouldn’t mind for a change.

“Your brother committed suicide to come with me into Hell,” said Castiel in his usual gravely tone. “I hate this with every fiber of my being but I am not going to throw that away. He and I did promise.” He clicked his fingers without breaking away from his staring contest with Winchester #2. Crowley’s chains fell away. “Get the Blade.”

Sam was staring at him. There was a lot of that going around, Crowley reflected, rubbing his wrists.

“You can hate me if you want. This is more my fault than it is Crowley’s. I should have seen it coming- or I should have agreed to make a stand against Cain here as he wanted. We promised not to do this anymore, to take all of the burden onto one of us to spare the others. We’re stronger together.”

Sam’s jaw worked. Then he ground out, “This is _wrong_.”

“It is. But it’s also the only way now. I will die before I let any further harm befall him, Sam. We will go down there, we will stop Abaddon before she can raise the one creature that _can_ kill your brother, and then we will cure him.”

“Cas- you don’t know what he’s like when he turns. Not really. You only saw him for a few minutes last time - and that was when he was practically cured. You weren’t here for the worst of it.”

“No. But I am here now, Sam. You will not carry this burden alone.”

“We don’t even know if the cure will work twice.”

“There’s no reason it will not.”

“Thats not good enough.”

“It has to be.”

Crowley had been looking from one to the other like a spectator at a tennis match. He gave point and set to the angel. And by the way...blimey. Of course Crowley thoroughly approved of his logic, but he was a demon; it was expected of him to use human bodies as a footstool to get to the box of cookies on the top shelf. The angel’s attitude rather surprised him. But it was all to the good, really; meant he didn’t have to talk both of them around.

“All decided? Very well, I’ll go fetch his _real_ lover, shall I?” he said and escaped to get the First Blade out of hiding before heavenly smiting up the jacksie could occur.


	3. Back With a Vengeance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter is probably the low point of Demon!Dean and Castiel's interaction throughout the fic, and it does contain minor physical injuries. Despite the obvious setup, this fic does not have any D/s tones, it's more about establishing parameters that will allow the two of them to be more dangerous to Hell than to each other.

Dean breathed in, a long inhale that brought his head up and straightened his spine, a breath that floated him into consciousness out of inky darkness. The air reeked of stale sweat, booze and old blood. 

It smelled wonderful.

He opened his eyes and everything was outlined in black for a moment. He was strapped to a chair in a familiar room and it felt like he was stuck in molasses. The background looked oddly fake, like something stapled out of cardboard at a grade school play, and the three creatures before him stood out in all new and interesting ways. Human, demon, angel - huh, just needed a monster and it would be full house. Clay, darkness and light. Standing out against the fake backdrop because - oh right.

“Hmmm, back on the rodeo bull...” His throat was raspy and dry. Came from being dead. He rotated his head to try to get a kink out of his neck. Tested the restrictions on his arms while he was at it. 

The meatbag - Sam - and the walking shining migraine made of light barely contained in flesh - Castiel - gave him looks that were all kinds of unhappy. Crowley (wreathed in smoke, the dark red of his eyes visible like an overlay to one of the same kind as himself) was the only one who grinned.

“That’s right, welcome back. There’s a difference though. This time we have you leashed, pup.”

Huh?

Sam stirred. “Wait. The seal - assuming it works - it needs to have a- a- um-“

“A master,” said Crowley with a rich leer.

Dean narrowed his eyes and looked from one to the other. Then he followed their gazes down to his chest and the curlicues visible just above the edge of his tee. Looked like it’d been done in marker and also overwritten with a burning brand - which did not seem to be healing. How come? Oh, probably angel fire. What, his previous tat wasn’t big and bold enough?

A memory swum up from the depths of Before.

Wait. Fuck.

“Son of a bitch,” said Dean in a soft voice, not addressing anyone currently alive in the room. “Stupid, stupid motherfucking spoilsport.”

“The text wasn’t clear how to...make this work.” Sam sounded ragged.

Crowley glanced at him. “The spell isn’t a deal - it’s certainly not a give and take - but it uses the same mechanics as one, just to set the cement so to speak. So how do you think it’s sealed, Moose?”

“What? Deal? Deals are sealed with- urgh.”

Dean’s head came up with a cold leer. 

“So who’s going to pucker up? Cas? It’s gonna be you, right?”

“I can do it-“

“Shut up, Crowley,” said Sam and Dean too (because yuck).

“Okay, then maybe Moose can, I’d pay good money to-“

“SHUT UP!”

“Ooh, Samantha,” Crowley cooed, “I did not know you could still hit those high notes.” 

Dean had to chuckle. Sam was like the energizer bunny, wind him up and watch him go...

“I will do it,” said the one who hadn’t spoken yet.

Dean leered at him. “Of course you will. You must be dying to have me on a leash, aren’t you, Cas.”

Crowley was the one to break the nasty silence that followed. “Well at least it’s not a major deal like Lilith used to broker, because we’re not here for _that_ kind of show. Though I could make good money off the pay-per-view. Still, time, she is a whore who never lets her johnnies linger. Draw that symbol I showed you on your hand, Feathers, then give him a wet one on the lips and lets take this freak show on the road.”

Castiel’s angel blade dropped down into his hand with an elegant minimum of motion. He lifted it, brought the point to his opposite palm and started slicing.

Crowley gaped. “I _was_ going to suggest using a marker, but if you want to go the fun route-”

“Ink would only mark my vessel.” The knife was cutting flecks of light out of his palm...

“Your- oh, I don’t think the leash has the same restrictions...but maybe you’re right, better safe than sorry. Won’t it heal though?”

“The flesh will. Not my true Being. Not if I don’t will it.”

“Fair enough.” 

Dean’s leer grew as he watched blood trickle down to a white sleeve. “Anyone else think that is kind of hot?”

“Shut up,” said Sam tightly (on the far side of the room out of the devil’s trap, Crowley had tilted his head to one side as if considering the question and then wisely decided not to say anything.)

Castiel slipped his blade back into his coat, leaned forward, grasped the back of Dean’s neck and touched their lips together - as they had many times before, right? Right.

Dean softened his mouth and then sunk in his teeth. 

The angel did not give him the satisfaction of flinching or even pulling away any faster than he’d leaned in. 

Sam made a noise of deep unhappiness as his gaze shied away from the blood on Castiel’s chin. Crowley glanced at his watch with a touch of impatience.

Dean’s eyes had not left Castiel’s. He licked his lips slowly and smiled. It’d have burned any other demon, but Dean was not any other demon. A little angel blood was no worse than that shot of hot sauce and tequila he’d had on a dare once south of the border. 

“How do we know if it worked?” Sam said in the festering hush that followed.

Castiel did not break away from his staring contest with Dean, but he raised his bloodied hand, making a fist. 

Dean glanced at it curiously-

His body jerked involuntarily and his head smashed back into the seat’s wooden head-rest hard enough to split his scalp.

“It works,” said Castiel.

A cavernous growl erupted from Dean’s mouth and the way he looked at Cas made Sam take an instinctive step back - but he was damned if he was going to give the halo the satisfaction, so he let the fury melt into an appreciative smirk.

“Knew you’d be into that BDSM crap if given the chance, you uptight sanctimonious ones are all the same.” He let his lips curl into a smile that was truly sacrilegious as he whispered, “So what are you going to make me do now?”

Castiel turned away abruptly. Not quickly enough to hide the hardening of his expression, the pain narrowing his eyes. 

Dean chuckled. Yeah, there was going to be some entertainment value there.

Still with his back turned, the angel said: “We are going to release your bonds. You will not attack Sam or myself.”

“Ah, angel-“

“Or Crowley.”

“Thank you.“

“Unless I tell you to.”

“Thank you,” repeated Crowley in a somewhat different tone.

“You will not attack any human unless I tell you to.” 

Sam stirred and glanced at Castiel’s back. “Or angels, right?”

“Or angels,” Castiel said with perhaps a second or two of delay.

“That it?” asked Dean, flexing his muscles beneath the ropes and manacles. “Got any more add’ums and codpieces to your little deal?”

“Addendum and codicils, you moron,” snapped Crowly from the sidelines, looking offended on behalf of the paperwork he so adored. 

Castiel, back still turned, was silent for a few heartbeats.

“Do your best to kill Abaddon. But if Cain has risen, we leave. You are not to take any unnecessary risk with your life in any case.”

“So you still care.” Dean languidly tipped his head back until the sore part no longer pressed against the headrest. “What a Hallmark moment.”

“Let’s go,” said Castiel, striding towards the exit to the dungeon without looking back.

The ropes and manacles abruptly fell off, so did the removable piece of the devil’s trap, releasing Dean from that heavy sticky feeling keeping him immobilized. 

Dean stood up and stretched, making his joints pop. His eyes opened a fraction. He rested his gaze on Sam nearby, the latter’s expression torn between loss and loathing. 

Dean contemplated violence.

But he felt a sudden tug at his skin and muscles and bones stopping the planned attack before it even started. So the leash did work, even on simple verbal commands such as ‘don’t murder your brother’.

Dean took two steps forward- his hand flashed out and patted his little bro on the cheek, ignoring the angel blade that had materialized in Sam’s hand from sheer shock.

“See you later, Sammy,” Dean murmured pleasantly without looking back.

So he wasn’t a puppet, he just had Kill and No Kill commands. Might be ways to work around that. 

Good to know.


	4. To Hell, From Hell, It’s All The Same

“So we need a plan of attack,” Crowley said as he took up a spot at the head of the map table.

“Kick in the front door, kill everything, deep six Abaddon, Miller time,” Dean said succinctly, stationing himself at the south pole, hands anchored at the table’s edge. Castiel had drawn up near Santa Claus Land in much the same pose. 

“Dean, do you need another minute to shake your suicidal tendencies?” Crowley asked with a parody of concern. “Or maybe a blankie?”

“We got the King of Hell, we got an angel and we got me. What chance does Tramps R’us have?”

“A few thousand at the least. I’d say that’s the number of chumps she’s managed to get on her side who will not cut and run.”

Dean snorted. But then again, why would he be in any hurry to ice the bitch? If it took them months to figure out how to infiltrate the Pit, that was all furlough for him. The single bar in Lebanon was crap, but he could always drive. They had a lot of stripper clubs in Kansas City. 

“We do this smooth and we do this smart,” said Crowley didactically. “Forget the Devil Gates; there’s only three left at this point, they’re well guarded and she’ll be expecting us from that direction. Which leaves the direct break-in method. Assuming you have the juice, Feathers?”

“I can get it,” said Castiel, eyes fixed on his side of the map table. “Are we going to the desert of Lut?”

“That’d be the obvious route, being where the dimensional wall is thinnest between here and home sweltering hot home. Too obvious, though. You mentioned you might rope in some extra angelic muscle?”

“I cannot bring them to Hell.”

“But could you get them to kick down the door and then stand their ground for a few minutes before they run away in a flock of feathers?”

Castiel gave Crowley a look of dislike. “Yes. I think so.”

“Good enough. Then the little humming birds go to Iran and keep Abaddon's attention focused there for awhile. You, I and the brand new hell bruiser are going to take a more subtle route.” 

“Which is?”

“Give me a quarter of an hour and I will tell you.”

With that, Crowley vanished.

“Do you need my help?” Sam asked quietly in the background.

Castiel looked up. “No. Go and do what needs to be done.”

Sam had an icebox in his large mitts, and he’d just stepped away from the fridge.

“I’ll go bug Father Collins again, then,” he muttered, heading towards the door. Getting Dean’s corpuscles sanctified. It was as if they thought this was all going to be over real soon. 

Dean was not pleased at the thought, but then again neither did the skin joints tantalize him all that much, come to think of it. The Mark was starting to itch. Limp-dick human Dean had been a good little boy recently. Hardly killed anyone other than going ballistic on that pack of vampires the other day. And that coven of witches the week before. And that kitsune he’d gutted the week before that - slow, because nobody had been watching and because he’d felt an irrational anger at her very existence (this had not been a card-carrying member of the ‘don’t feed on humans’ club). And the week before that-

The silence settled, as heavy and smothering as a tarp over a corpse.

“I liked the head banging thing,” Dean murmured, eyes on Castiel. 

Castiel kept his eyes on the Red Sea.

“Nice touch.”

No response.

“Quick way of saying, ‘I don’t care what happens to a demon even if he’s wearing my boyfriend’s skin’ while pretending that’s not what you were saying.” 

Silence.

“Though of course we both know that’s not true.” 

The silence grew warning signs. Dean merrily ignored them. 

“Or am I wrong?”

Silence.

“Yeah, just maybe I am wrong. Dean 1.0, now, he always thought of you as his straight-shooter, the one angel out there who wasn’t a dick. But maybe that was sloppy thinking on ol’ Dean’s part. Sure, you help. And you give your human moppet a good time in the sack. But aren’t you cut from the same cloth as those fuckers who gave Job twelve shades of hell just to teach him a life lesson? Who stuck knives through innocent babies, burned down cities and drowned the world?”

The silence went from noisome to toxic.

“Well? Is there something a bit more twisted in there than poor lil’ human Dean realized?”

Silence.

“Do you like hurting me, Cas?” Dean asked, voice low and intimate, lips twitching in amusement.

Castiel finally looked up from the map. “I don’t mind hurting a demon, no. I am not Sam. I can see you for what you are.” 

“Yeah. But you can see _me_ too. Can’t you.”

Cas just gave him that stolid look. It made Dean’s lips twitch away from his teeth in a carnivore smile. 

“Must be killing you.” 

The blue eyes flinched minutely. The lips tightened but the angel didn’t say anything. 

Their eyes locked over the sprawl of the planet sending light up into their faces.

“Whitechapel,” said Crowley, suddenly reappearing. 

Silence.

“Am I interrupting something?”

“Yes,” said Dean just as Cas said, “No.”

“Wonderful. I see our army’s coordination is fully up to snuff. Focus, lads, or this will be over before Abaddon finishes painting that new coat of varnish on her claws.”

Castiel straightened and looked away. “Whitechapel? Are you suggesting we take _that_ route?”

“From hell, to hell, it’s all the same.” 

“That is a dangerous gamble.”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’ll protect you,” Dean said with a grin that was all teeth.

Castiel ignored him.

...He was going to do that a lot, Dean realized.

That did not sit well with him.

Crowley and Castiel started getting into a technical discussion about going all Ocean’s Eleven on the Pit. Dean watched the angel’s profile.

If Castiel saw him as just another demon, he would have no problem controlling Dean. Hurting him. Even pulverizing him if he felt the leash slip; he couldn’t kill the descendant of Cain, but nothing bought time like lopping off a couple of limbs. More to the point, he wouldn’t let ‘just another demon’ near enough to get in under that tight-fitting halo...

But Dean was not just a demon.

And maybe that was a way in. 

“I could talk with a Reaper,” Castiel said, still ignoring Dean to pay attention to Crowley. “They could-“

”- sell us to Abaddon quicker than you can say gift-wrapped. I know they’re technically a part of you gang, but trust me, most of them are on Hell’s payroll now-“

...If he could show Cas that he wasn’t just a demon, that there was still a lot of Dean in here, maybe Castiel would- no, the angel was not about to take off the leash, even he wasn’t that dumb. 

“Dean?” prompted Crowley, staring at him. Castiel was looking at him too now. Dean registered that Crowley had asked him something. 

“I’ll kill anything in front of me.” 

Crowley stirred. “That wasn’t what I asked you.”

“Then you picked the wrong question.”

“Were you even listening?”

“Nope.”

“...Swell. This is going to go down like the Hindenburg.”

...If he could worm his way into Cas’s feelings, then the angel might conceivably make a mistake. Not watch the seal’s integrity well enough. Forget to phrase an order with the proper paranoia. It could happen...And if not, then at least Dean would have the satisfaction, right at the end, of showing Cas just how much he’d been duped yet again. Maybe he couldn’t stick the First Blade into his ‘boyfriend’, but he could stick that thought where it would hurt the most and _twist_. That’d be a challenge. That’d be vicious. That’d be fun. 

But how to get in? Playing nice wasn’t going to cut it - even if Dean could hack that. But no, Castiel wasn’t _that_ gullible. He wouldn’t buy a nice demon anymore than Dean could sell that.

...He’d buy Dean being Dean, though.

Come to think of it, that’d hurt ten times as much. A demon was a demon was a demon. But seeing remnants of your human screw buried deep in black eyes like the half rotten corpse of your loved one buried in a tar pit, oh, that would bite. And the best part of that plan was that Dean didn’t have to fake being nice, he didn’t have to fake anything. He just had to be himself - well, the somewhat less nasty part of himself, but not so much.

“Sounds good, then,” said Dean. “Let’s hit up the local White Castle.”

Crowley looked startled. “What?”

“Always knew the way to hell would be through one of their burgers.”

“White- White _chapel_ , you yob.”

“s’at in Pennsylvania?”

“London! England!”

Dean heaved a bored sigh. “Can’t we just bust through the gate in Wyoming?”

“No!”

“What’s wrong, Crowley? You _want_ to creep in through the back door rather than charge in through the front? Aren’t you supposed to be king of the place? Cas and I can hold both your little hands if you’re scared, you know.”

Crowley gave him a venomous look and turned to Castiel for support. And just there, at the corner of that little blue peeper, for just a second Dean caught a faint gleam of satisfaction. So, ragging on Crowley? Definitely a way of getting bonus points with the angel.

Castiel seemed to consider things, looking down at the table. When he looked up, it was at Dean.

“The Whitechapel route is dangerous, but the assault will happen in stages. Each stage will have sentinels and none can be allowed to escape, or we will be facing too much opposition in the Plain of Ge’enna. If we can silence them, we can make it to the inner reaches of Hell without facing an entire army. Whitechapel, however, has many twisted souls and traps on the way down. So it is a trade off. Do you have any objections?” 

Dean rolled his shoulders into a shrug. “You had me at ‘no survivors’.”

They pushed away from the table at the same time and walked towards the door side by side, leaving Crowley to huff and grumble and follow behind. Dean noting in passing the way Cas had asked _him_ without glancing at Crowley. Yes, sending up the King of Hell was definitely something even two Beings on polar opposite sides of the spheres could get behind over a brewsky. Plus it was fun.


	5. The Entrance To Hell Is A Yuppie Nightmare (Figures)

Outside the bunker, the scenery still looked fake. Dean remembered this. How the world around him felt made out of cardboard and gum, dim and dingy. That was what earth looked like to demons - possibly angels as well? Humans were the shiny little playthings in all this tawdriness, the real toys to bat around and tear apart. Dean hadn’t been quite that bored with the scenery yet. Not quite. Though he had enjoyed hearing bones crunch; so much more fun than anything material, he thought, giving the black car outside the bunker an indifferent glance.

But on that thought-

“How we getting to England?” For an unpleasant second he thought of airplanes. 

“Still can’t get there on your own steam?” Crowley scoffed. “Have you even tried?”

“Haven’t needed to yet,” said Dean disinterestedly. “Cas? Can you airlift?”

There was a faint pause. “Yes.”

Dean hid a smile. Awww, did the angel not want to put his paw on Dean’s shoulder anymore? He’d had them all over the place before. But Dean swallowed the comment. It would be a jab, but a small petty one. He was winding up for the big slug.

“Get flapping, then.”

“The landing might be...difficult. You are different now.”

Ok

“Spare me the-“

A rustle.

Dean was hurled downwards- but Cas caught him around the shoulders, dropping to one knee and holding him to keep Dean from body-slamming concrete. Air warped and blew around them and a black garbage can went crashing into the far wall of the alley they’d appeared in. Close to Dean’s ear he heard Cas grunt in an effort to keep Dean from hitting ground. Dean had more power in this form, he gathered, and this translated to more metaphysical mass, more presence. Decaf Dean could be flown Economy class, Demon Knight Dean was as transportable as a T-Rex. 

Same principle would apply in a fight with the angel, too. But that would have to wait for the leash to come off.

Once they’d gotten their balance back - and Cas took his hands off like he was making a point of not letting them linger - they looked around. It was late evening. The street was brightly lit. Opposite the alley Dean could see a shop selling Norwegian furniture (even though he was pretty sure Crowley had said they were going to England), a raw food restaurant and a clothes shop that was too trendy to put a name above its door. 

“ _This_ is an entrance to Hell? It’s like a yuppie nightmare.”

“I do have to agree with you,” groused Crowley, stepping out of the void at their side and giving their surroundings a distasteful look. “Rough landing, angel?” he added, glancing at the overturned garbage can. 

“You could have offered to help.”

”Yes, I could have.”

“How is this getting us to Hell?” Dean asked, shaking himself. “The fun one with fire and brimstone, not this fucking Hell of twats buying polo sweaters.”

“Ah, that requires knowledge and power. And brute force too, near the end. That’s where you come in.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Where do we start?” Castiel asked.

“This way.” Crowley led them through well lit streets, shops, brightly painted houses, trendy brick tenements and more yuppie restaurants with rabbit food even Sam would have shied away from.

“Its like freaking SoCal on steroids here,” Dean muttered. Though he’d just seen a red double decker bus go by. He thought those only existed in movies. That was a tiny bit cool. 

“Give it a minute,” Crowley said with a snort, leading them down a road marked Durward St on a weird blue foreign looking road sign with a fancy yellow crown painted above the name.

“Here we go.” They were at a narrow street between a large brick building and a high-end shoe shop with nothing shorter than six inches on the heel and a price tag just as long. “After you, Feathers.”

Castiel took the lead, walking ahead with his hands stuffed into his trench coat pockets. 

“Left,” directed Crowley, five feet behind him. 

Cas turned left.

“Blimey, they just go on building stuff here,” Crowley muttered as left led them to a construction site barred by a gate.

Cas gestured. The gate flew open. They continued walking. A rattle and clatter of a subway a couple blocks over briefly covered traffic noises.

Left. Right. Over a chain link fence. Left and left and left - Dean was starting to get bored. Eventually they were back at Durward street again, passing humans chatting and being a bunch of British yuppies, which were no better than the US of A kind as far as Dean could tell.

And then they were back at the same alley!

“Crowley,” Dean growled. “Are you drunk? You're leading us in circles.”

“Patience, Grasshoper,” Crowley advised. 

“He knows what he’s doing, Dean. This is normal,” Cas said up ahead.

Whatever the hell, Dean internally grumbled as they walked up the same damn alley. Some officious little peon had closed the construction yard gate again, and added a thick padlock in the ten minutes they’d been gone. 

Cas gestured. The padlock fell off and the gate flew open again.

They did the same damn tour as before! Left and left and right. Graffiti and tags fought each other under streetlights. Over the fence, around the same dumpster - though it reeked even worse now. Dean kicked a rusty can and wondered when he’d get to kill something.

Durham street was darker, night was falling fast. There were only two or three people about now, hurrying through the streets. All the yuppies must be in their vegan restaurants, eating their humanely slaughtered vegetables.

They were headed back towards the same alley. Castiel seemed certain Crowley wasn't fucking with them. Dean wasn't convinced.

The street was even darker now, the brick building loomed- no, it was actually a warehouse. Dean had thought it was trendy apartments built out of the bones of an old factory or something. He must have been mistaken.

Left again-

But this time the alley was blocked with a clapboard put-together fence with STAY OUT scrawled over it. 

Dean’s eyebrows arched, but in fact he felt relieved. So they _were_ going somewhere.

Cas lifted a hand, touched his palm to the plywood and chickenwire assembly. The whole barricade exploded. 

Dean saw afterimages; the flare-bang of Cas’s Wings flexing, visible to demon eyes. Like it had taken him an effort to blow that away. Dean could have kicked it down with one foot. In appearance, anyway, but obviously that was not the only thing going on here. 

They continued to walk. Dean heard the ratchet-clack of another subway train shake the ground and a screech of brakes like a scream.

The fence they had to climb over before was a brick wall this time, six feet high topped with broken bottles set in crumbling cement. Cas seemed to take one fluid step- then he was on top of the wall, from where he dropped off again. Crowley and Dean had to climb. Glass cut Dean’s palm. It healed before he’d walked ten paces.

There was nobody walking up Durham street now, and there were hardly any lights. A garbage fire burned off to one side where there’d been a fashionable furniture shop before. Were they going back in time? It didn’t feel like the past. But something hinky was happening. This felt less like a fake backdrop than the bunker had. And there was something growing here, a miasma of evil. The two guys hunkered around the garbage fire barely looked human. Made Dean feel considerably more at home than that trendy fashion nightmare from earlier. His step gained some bounce.

Cas slowed, eyes on the hobos as he passed, then stopped at the entrance of the same bloody alley - only there was no shoe shop this time, just two warehouses on either side, windows broken and grimy. 

“Crowley, give Dean the First Blade.”

“Now? This is the beach compared to what’s below.”

Cas didn’t say anything but stood there looking stubborn.

“Very well,” Crowley grumbled and drew the Blade from the inside of his thick coat. 

Dean’s fingers closed around the hilt. From deep inside his body, he could hear something that might have been his heart, the blood in his veins, or might have been a distant savage drumbeat and high keening cries from a far off primitive shore...

A tiny part of him whispered in return. Hello, beautiful...did you miss me? 

There was a part of all this that Dean did not like - and it had nothing to do with the sham he was playing up for Cas, or the knowing look Crowley was giving him, like a dealer handing a junkie his dose. The truth was, Dean hated the Mark just as surely as Cain must have hated it too over the millennia. Hated the way it controlled him. The way it made him kill rather than let him choose to or not. He hated the way it made him reach for the First Blade like it wouldn’t be his choice to do so otherwise. Hated even the way the two of them, Mark and Blade, fit together, required each other.

He hated it all until the Blade was in his hands and he could sink it into someone’s guts. 

Then everything got simple. Calm and clear. Like back in Purgatory, only better because he wasn’t the hunted this time, he was the hunter. The Mark tried to control him, but the Blade...she helped keep even the Mark quiet. She was nothing more or less than his tool. His weapon. She let him be himself.

“You just couldn’t wait to pick up that knife again,” Crowley snorted. 

“It’s handy,” Dean said calmly, tilting the Blade until it caught some of the yellowy streetlight. “You don’t have to worry about what you’re facing. Demon, monster, human, angel - kills ‘em all. The one-stop solution to all your pest problems.”

“And it makes you feel your oats, doesn’t it.” Crowley smirked. He’d turned just a bit. He might be facing Dean, but he was talking to the angel at his shoulder. “You do have to admit, he’s more useful like this - especially now we can give him direction. Old human Dean was getting a bit creaky in the knees after all that fighting. Sure, he stumbled into a lot of solutions to world wide problems, but more by luck than design, and it usually involved throwing himself or Sam onto a grenade. Poor sod was so often swinging outside his weight class. When Cain suggested he take on the Mark, well, he just couldn’t wait to get his hands on some real mojo.”

Dean had half hoped that holding the Blade would free him from the seal; it had allowed him to buck Abaddon’s control once, after all. He thought longingly of replacing Crowley’s black necktie with a Columbian version, but no luck, the tightening of his sinews told him his choke chain was still in place.

“I wish I had been there to help you.” Once again, Cas was addressing Dean. “I was fighting for my life in Heaven-“

Dean’s head snapped around. “Oh yeah! Let’s not forget how that came about! All those other fucking halos were A-OK with the apocalypse wiping out the monkeys, but executing one measly traitorous tree-topper like Metatron? Hell no! So they locked him up in jail nice and cozy, where he wormed his way out to lead a revolution against Naomi. And instead of letting them all kill each other - which would have gotten my vote even before I got demonized - you went up there to ‘help restore the peace’.” 

The Blade waved up and down like a set of vicious air quotes. Cas’s eyes jumped to it.

“While you were up there being the UN, Abaddon was targeting me and Sam and all our friends and killing every hunter she could find. And then-“

“Dean-“

”And then an angel shows up and tries to gut us on Metatron’s orders - and oh yeah, he tells us you’re _dead_.” The expression on Dean’s face was the diametrical opposite of the one he’d had back when he was human and heard the news. This wasn’t really the ‘be nice’ plan - ah, but he’d thrown that plan out, hadn't he. This was the ‘being Dean’ plan - and he was going to _enjoy_ saying every aching burning word that wimpy human Dean had kept bottled up back then. And Cas would know it wasn’t ‘just a demon’ talking. Oh, he would know. 

“I wasn’t-“

“Yeah, yeah, you’d been whammied by Metatron, you got put in jail yourself, then you broke out, came back down and gave me a lecture. But you know what? Crowley is a huge bag of withered dicks -“

“Oy.”

”-but he’s right. I reached for that Mark like Truman reached for the A-Bomb, because behind Abaddon was a whole lotta angels that needed killing. The Blade racked up quite a score of halos, until Metatron had to finally show in person and skewer your poor lil’ Dean. Which backfired so hard, because then he was dealing with _me_. And you can get all pissy about it, but that’s what gave you and Naomi the edge to beat him and his side, wasn’t it?”

Cas looked like he’d chewed on a lemon. It made Dean grin, step up near and pat the lapel of his trench coat with the Blade. 

“See, all these fucking bastards from Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, they only understand one thing in the end: who’s got the biggest knife. Who’s got the power to put them on ice if they step out of line. And since I always seem to land the job _anyway_ , you gonna blame me for getting the mojo to go with it for once?”

Cas’s eyes lifted from the Blade to fix Dean’s gaze. “I don’t blame you. It _was_ a mistake. But I made it too.”

Dean blinked. “Huh?”

Cas stared at him from five inches away. “When I broke into Purgatory. I was trying to fix it all on my own, facing Rafael and his plans for the apocalypse. I reached for power. Without asking for advice, without looking for alternatives. In much the same way you went hunting for the First Blade and the Mark. We both tried to fix everything by ourselves. We both made the mistake of thinking that taking on a burden of power beyond us was the solution. Though at the root of both our bad decisions,” he added, turning his head slowly to one side, “was agreeing to get help from _that_.”

”...You make a point.”

Crowley gave a deer in the headlights look for a brief moment as both the angel and the demon stared at him - but of course the King of Hell was no pushover either, even if he looked like a shopkeeper. “Nice, halo. 'The devil made me do it' is such a trite excuse. Almost as bad as ‘just following orders’.”

“Yeah, and you’re such a Sunday school teacher,” Dean snorted. Crowley gave him a sour look.

“Dean,” Cas said - ignoring Crowley completely, like the boss-angel he was - “we'll be running the gauntlet soon. There will be humans as well as other creatures. But from here on out and until we leave Whitechapel, you can kill humans if you have to. If they are here, they can probably be considered a lost cause, and I will not have time to do triage.” The words were reluctant and heavy. 

The Mark seemed to sing within him - but Dean wasn’t going to stoop to showing it. “Where _is_ here?” he asked, falling into step with Castiel, leaving Crowley skulking behind like a third wheel. “Are we going back in time?”

Cas tipped his head as if considering that. “It's not literal time travel, no. We are moving through...echoes, you might say, from a point in time when a great evil created a hole through the planes, and let hideous things escape.”

“What made the hole?”

“Concentrated human misery. Centuries of it. Also some unfortunate architectural choices, five Masonic wizards out of their depth, Balthazar getting drunk in Spitalfields in the sixteenth century and a dead cat tossed into a well a long time back. You could say it was...complicated.” 

”That’s one word for it.”

They reached the construction site, now barred with a metal gate built out of piping, plate steel soldered onto it for reinforcement like something out of a Mad Max movie. Cas didn’t lift a hand this time, he took one look at it and stood aside. “Crowley.”

“My turn.” 

Crowley went up, passed his palm over certain areas. The door swung open slowly.

“Now things get interesting,” said Crowley, stepping aside and waving Dean through.

“Who are these yahoos?” Dean asked, hefting the Blade. There were four people on the other side of the gate, standing about like scarecrows. After a few seconds Dean’s presence seemed to impinge on their senses and they shuffled towards him. They did not look normal to Dean’s extra senses, they seemed...hollow. They were crudely armed, hammers and such, but they did not look all that keen to use them.

“Lost souls,” said Castiel.

“Like, literally?”

“No, they-“

One of the bastards swung a fireman’s axe at him. Dean smoothly ducked beneath the blow and sent the attacker sprawling with a kick to the knees.

“Do we need to kill these monkeys?”

“Do you want to keep dodging until they get tired?” sneered Crowley.

“...They are not all that dangerous and they will not spread a warning,” said Cas stiffly, almost reluctantly, as if he did not want to float this suggestion only to see it shot down. “Whitechapel burns out mortals who get lost here. If you throw them back through the door behind us, they may yet find their way out of this place and back to a human existence.”

Dean grunted, grabbed his attacker by the back of a tattered dirty business suit - who knew how this guy had gotten here - picked him up bodily and hurled him through the construction site gate.

The guy rolled and hollered in sudden pain and fear as soon as he hit the sidewalk on the other side. Until now, none of the attackers vaguely trying to whack them had made a single sound.

In short order, Dean had grabbed, hurled or manhandled the other three through the gate. One of them collapsed and lay still - dead, Dean guessed, from the sudden absence of that almost-light that made the difference between man and mere meat. The other two retched or seized or otherwise looked unhappy.

Crowley was giving him an odd look when Dean brushed his hands together brusquely and untucked the Blade from the back of his belt.

“You didn’t kill them,” said Cas, looking at him with something between surprise and suspicion.

“Please. It’d be like duking it out with store mannequins,” Dean said - which was actually the truth so it hadn’t been that hard a decision, even if it’d also been part of the ‘cozening up to Cas’ plan. “There’ll be better targets further in, I bet, critters that can actually take a proper swing at me.”

“I see,” said Cas, and lo and behold there was a teeny tiny little bit of defrosting of the holy iceberg. 

“I wish you’d shown some of that restraint _last_ time you partied, pup,” Crowley said with some acerbity as they headed down the same old route once more. He turned to Castiel. “Did he give you the highlights when he got back from our road trip? The drinking, the partying, the womanizing, that was just the start.“

Since Dean knew how to torture a demon for years without killing him, would the ‘Don’t kill Crowley’ order cover that...? Damn, it apparently did. Not that Cas was actually going to mind that a demon shaped like his boyfriend had hit up the equivalent of an entire varsity team of bar bunnies, because Cas didn’t care about that shit - but it annoyed Dean that Crowley thought he’d actually hurt the angel, which was something only Dean was allowed to do now.

Castiel was still looking at Dean and talking to him rather than over his head like Crowley did. “I heard quite a bit about your excesses,” he said and his next words made clear it was the blood he was talking about, not the boozing or the boobs. “Though I understood from Sam that you did nowhere near the damage you could have.” 

“Hmf, the crime against humanity was a bit over the top,” Crowley sniffed. 

Dean stopped as if he’d walked into a wall. There was putting gears in the works between him and Cas, and then there was just fucking lying and making him sound like some out of control whackjob. “Hey! First Degree and manslaugther I’ll give you, and a whole lot of GBH, but crime against humanity?”

“That’s what they call your karaoke in The Hague.”

“Oh, give me a break, I do an awesome-“

“The UN held a special meeting, it’s in the minutes, look it up.”

“Bite me.”

“I’ll let them do that,” Crowley said, taking a step back just as Cas hissed a warning.

A woman dressed in a long filthy dress that might have been lacy white once hurled herself at Dean and tried to claw his eyes out. Dean sidestepped and sent her falling. Then he blinked.

“-the fuck? What am I seeing here?” The earlier mannequins had been clay with a little soul. This chick looked like she had a body, but Dean's black eyed overlay told him there was no meat here at all, just rage and a desire to sink her teeth in his throat. 

“A spirit - you call them revenants,” Cas said quickly. 

“Oh, so fair game,” Dean said and stuck the Blade into the chick’s midriff as she came in low, claws aiming for the Winchester family jewels.

The Blade sank in, the woman choked and then vanished in stages like smoke drifting away. Dean yanked out the Blade before she was quite gone and turned to the next in line. She was wearing a short leather skirt, torn fishnets and a Madona tank top. The large heavyset dame behind her was dressed in blue calf-length tweedy stuff and a cheap looking boa. There were about ten of them moving out of the shadows, all dressed from different epochs it seemed, though they did have a few things in common.

“Why are they all dames?”

“You may not want to know” said Castiel, stepping next to Dean and putting his own blade through a near naked girl’s throat.

“You’re right. Because it’ll be boring history and shit.”

”...Because of that.” Cas did not look like he wanted to talk about it anyway. But to have made that suggestion in the first place...it seemed that the line between Demon and Dean was getting faintly blurry for the angel.

“When you’re done with the mollies,” Crowley said from behind their backs, the cowardly little shit, “we need to move on.”


	6. Pop! Goes the Weasel

Around and around the mulberry bush they went. Always the same road, the same alley, then a gate - less and less chicken-wire and more and more ‘abandon all hope’. Then left, right, a wall - getting higher and higher and nastier. Then hang a few lefts back to the road beyond. The street lights looked like gas lamps now. At some point the fancy blue Durward Street nameplate had been replaced with a simpler black one, then with an older grimier one, then a broken slate with Buck’s Row on it. On the next pass after that, Buck’s had been scratched out and someone had scribbled ‘Bitch’s Row’ in its place. The bricks of the buildings were so grimy they looked black and rotten. Yellow steam oozed out of manhole covers and choked the little light there was left. The whole block was a purulent sore, and Dean had to snicker at the thought of the yuppies eating their hummus dips and sleeping in their trendy apartments just a sliver of an echo away. How many psychos had come out of this high end place, he wondered...

On and on. Dean lost track, but he thought they’d done twenty turns of the block by now.

Cas led the way. Somehow he was cutting through these echoes, passing from one to the next. Easing them down deeper, walking a spiral rather than in circles, a twisted corkscrew stairs that went all the way Down. The angel’s Being was more visible now against this backdrop of growing darkness. There’d been light shining around Cas from the start, a light that prickled Dean’s black eyes and made him squint a bit inside, so to speak, but now he could see it more clearly, a flickering aura roughly ten feet by ten with shadowy wings like contrails floating behind him.

While Cas plowed ahead, Crowley directed him from behind. That seemed redundant. Dean could find his way through this London alley and road blindfolded by now. Yet on three occasions, Crowley had them stop, move back a step and take a left turn again...and Dean had realized that he and Cas had been heading in the wrong direction, or moving towards a bottomless pit where earlier a dozer had dug up a sewer line a few echoes ago. This place was trying to play with their heads, but Crowley knew the way. Maybe because he was a demon. Or maybe because when it came to being nasty and utterly twisted, this asshole place had nothing on Crowley.

And Dean got his workout. Each turn of the block brought a fight with it, the outposts Cas had warned him about. Revenants, soulless humans - Cas had no problem killing them, he probably did not see the point of keeping them around once the soft chewy center was gone. Then some up and coming wraiths who’d found a good feeding ground on the humans stranded here. And there were demons, of course, patrolling up and down Buck’s Row with the occasional hellhound in tow. Cas had to be careful not to use too much angel juice as this could send ripples through the echoes, warning sentinels up ahead, so it was mostly up to Dean to do the cleanup. Cas had been right, it was long, arduous but in stages, made it more manageable. 

Round and round. Cas blazed the trail, Crowley kept them on track, Dean killed stuff. Not a bad combo, all in all.

“I see you don’t use your powers,” Castiel said slowly, as if feeling his way through a darkened room full of rusted knives by touch. 

“Hm?”

They’d just cleared out a group of some kind of monster Dean had never seen before. They’d been fast, and their teeth were sharp in their overlarge mouths - a bit like Leviathans, but not quite that bad. Which was a pity, that was something Dean would love to sharpen the Blade on...

Crowley was up ahead, staring at what had started out as a construction site gate hours ago, and was now a wall which rose so high they’d not have a chance of getting over it without ropes and pitons - and Cas had said that flying them over would be ‘dangerous’. 

“Your powers.” 

“My knight mojo?” Dean shrugged and hefted the Blade. “Don’t need it. I got a set of donkey dentures and a good left hook. Don’t need to pull a rabbit out of my ass.”

Cas did not point out that one of the baby-levis had nearly bitten Dean’s head off. Did he get that this was part of the fun? Probably not. 

“You’ve done well up to this point, but we are assaulting Hell,” was what Cas finally said.

“Yeah? So far it’s Tuesday in my books.” 

“It’s about to get harder,” Cas said grimly.

Cas was examining him. Was he wondering, perhaps, if Dean didn’t want to use his powers because they’d make him feel too damned and demony? 

He could let the angel believe that. It’d be aligned with his ‘fuck with Castiel’s head’ plan. 

Nah. 

“I say bring it. I never had the opportunity to break out the big moves so far.”

“You didn’t go looking for stronger opponents before,” Cas pointed out.

That was true for, well, reasons - but mainly had to do with Crowley wanting Dean to get off his ass and do something constructive, which only made Dean party harder. 

“Didn’t seem to be any around,” Dean said, then ducked his head to give Cas a sly smile. ”What’s up, angel? Looking forward to seeing me flex my own wings? Is that going to be a turn-on for you?”

Cas looked like he’d smelled rotten egg. “No. Your powers are foul. A knight of Hell pollutes what it touches, the earth it treads upon.” 

“Oh come on, that’s the party line. Maybe I don’t look quite as good as I used to, but I kick a lot more ass, and I know a part of you appreciates that.”

It was a taunt, and he expected Cas to deny it long and loud. But Cas didn’t. He looked away with a constipated air, one hand stuffed in his ever-lovin’ trench coat.

“When you are your true self...you are an incredibly strong man, you’ve faced dangers that have destroyed angels,” he said slowly. 

“But? I sense a but.”

“...But I couldn’t have taken you with me on this raid. Whitechapel crushes even the strongest mortal willpower. As you are now, your corruption protects you and your strength protects us. We would not have gotten down here so easily without your help. I think the odds of killing Abaddon are in our favor now. Because of you. I don’t like it, but it is what it is,” Cas added, his tone a blend of harsh and morose. “I just wish I had not backed you into this corner. That I had listened to your alternatives first.”

“Aww, don’t be like that.” Dean reached over and gave Cas a one-armed hug - as part of the long term plan and because of the wild look that got him. And also because the angel had just shat out a large honest brick there, and that was pretty heroic. “It’s all in a day’s work. We go kill Abaddon, then before you start poking me with that blood cocktail, how about we find something more challenging to do?”

Cas scowled first at the arm around his shoulder, then at Dean. “Once Abaddon is dead, we are going to cure you.”

“Really? I was thinking of knock-knock-knockin' on Heaven’s door.”

“What?!” Cas jerked away from the arm.

“You said there’s still a lot of tension up there. How about we go pay them a visit? Not this kind of visit. Though, hey, if you want me to give Naomi the same haircut I’m gonna give Abaddon, you don’t need to yank my leash for that. But we could break in to say hi. Just to put the wind up them.” Maybe kill Metatron, who was still alive and back in jail despite having ex-ed ‘normal Dean’ awhile back, thank you very much _Naomi!_ Hell, she’d probably given the bastard skin mags in his cell as a silent attaboy. “Hey, I guarantee you, we do that and it will stop the squabbling.”

“And focus all their attention on us,” Castiel said, still all frowny-faced. “That is a very stupid idea.” 

“But fun!”

“How is that _fun?_ ”

“Come on. Wouldn’t you like to put your feet up on Naomi’s desk and point out that her leadership and defenses could use work if something like me could get near someone like her? Bet next time shit happens, she calls on us instead of letting it get loose to build an army. Next time something like Abaddon and Cain threaten to rise, she doesn’t turn up her nose and say it’s just humanity’s problem and its all the same to her.”

“That...would not be constructive,” said Cas, but he did not seem as wholly into objecting this time and there’d been a hint of a thousand yard stare aimed upwards for a second or two.

“This is the best I can do,” said Crowley, coming back towards them.

Dean looked over Crowley’s shoulder and snorted. “What? You expect us to get through _that_?”

Crowley had, after twenty minutes of head scratching, managed to remove one - _one_ \- of the bricks in the wall right at ground level. The stone blocks were the size of a case of Jack Daniels, there was no way any of them were limber enough to squeeze through that.

“Halo? Can you get us through?” Crowley asked.

Cas crouched down and looked through the hole. “Yes. But it will be tiring. You are both gaining consistency while I am losing strength.”

“It’s the hot, dry climate,” Crowley deadpanned. Not that he was wrong. It had been cold and damp back in what was legitimately England a few hours ago, now it felt like a summer day in New Mexico out in the salt flats, but with darkness and the smell of death instead of sunshine and the smell of highway exhaust.

Dean didn’t know if he was ‘gaining consistency’, but he could see that Cas was...lessened here. His Being was shining less bright in the strange overlay to reality Dean could perceive, his Light was compressed into a smaller space, the Wings pulled up closer to his back. 

“Besides, Dean is corporeal. It changes things,” Cas added as he straightened up.

Crowley snorted. “I’m not leaving my meat suit behind and neither are you, so I suggest you stop making excuses. Chop chop.” Big of him to say that, all he’d done was remove a brick.

...Senses teased Dean...It was not ‘just a brick’, it was not just a wall. This was a barrier in more senses than one. And Crowley had put a hole through it. Dean wondered if he could do that, if he had to. 

Castiel gave Crowley an unpleasant look and reached for him. 

Crowley held up a hand, palm out in a ‘hold it’ gesture. “I suggest we send the brute through first-“

Cas shoved the demon on the shoulder and poof, no more Crowley.

Dean snickered.

“I’m fine, thanks for asking,” came a snotty British voice from the other side of the wall.

Cas turned to Dean. “This will not be pleasant.”

“Hit me, baby,” Dean said with a toothy grin, which widened when Cas looked briefly confused.

Cas put his hand on Dean’s shoulder-

It was like getting tossed through a wind tunnel. The one used for testing the freaking space shuttle. It only lasted a second or two, but Dean felt both compressed and blown away at once and it was, indeed, not pleasant. 

He rolled on instinct when his back hit ground again, and got to his feet in one move, Blade at the ready. Disappointingly, there was only Crowley standing there. Even more disappointingly, the leash was still stopping Dean from killing him. 

“And here we are, on the outskirts of Hell,” said Crowley.


	7. Hot Damn

“And here we are, on the outskirts of Hell,” said Crowley. “I warn you, I never got around to redecorating this part.”

“It shows. Though...” Dean scratched his chin. “I don’t know. Looks a bit like Mordor.”

“Oh please!” Crowley sniffed, then looked around. “I guess it does a bit.”

There was a lot of barren red rock, twisted and blasted, black basalt slabs, smoldering sections where steam or actual lava oozed from the ground. If Dean had ever had Christian Bible studies (rather than the How To Kill Stuff Bible studies he’d actually grown up on) this hellish landscape would be hair-rising, but now he just expected to see a couple of hobbits staggering along, heading towards one of the numerous volcanoes dotting the horizon.

Crowley was typing something on his phone rather than looking at the scenery. Dean thought he read ‘P. Jackson Copyright infring.?’ - when a loud flap made him turn around.

Cas was on the ground, struggling to get his hands beneath him, gasping for breath.

Crowley looked up abruptly from his phone. “Dean,” he said, sounding dead serious and without using one of the million nicknames he had in store. “All that stuff before? That was the dog’s bollocks compared to this. This is where we can’t botch things up anymore. We cannot let anything live from here on out.”

“Awesome.”

“Starting with those five plebes over there.”

Dean glanced around. Sure enough, five black-eyed bitches had just rounded the nearest crag and were staring at them in surprise. Two of them were wearing meat suits, the other three...they looked human, sort of, though they had the same feel as ghosts. They were now deep enough where demons in their natural form no longer showed up as smoke. And could now be stabbed. Neat.

“Take a breather,” Dean said over his shoulder -

\- and vanished.

It was like taking a step - a really large one. And it wasn’t that hard, in final. Maybe it’d be harder back on Earth, but down here it was just a matter of deciding where to go-

\- a flicker -

\- and who to kill first

The demon goggled at the Blade sticking up through his chest from behind before he crackled red and died choking.

Dean kicked backwards and knocked a second hell-goon into a third, just so they wouldn’t feel left out while he played with their friends first. He spun- numero quatro got splattered.

The fifth and ugliest of the bruisers, who Dean mentally dubbed ‘Princess’ because it’d be bound to annoy, tried to score him in the right arm with a club made out of rock, aiming to make him drop the Blade. Dean dodged, muttered, “Finally,” and went to town on the resistance, pitiful as it was. But he doubled back quickly to take out the last two as they ran away. One got the blade through the lower abdomen - meat-suit, messy - and the last one had time to beg, maybe two seconds worth, before the Blade came down on his skull a few times and turned it to mush. Demon brain juice went squelching everywhere and Dean gave it an extra whack to see how far he could make it spurt. Then he straightened up and checked his six for more targets.

Three of the bodies, the ones without meat suits, were flaring like garbage fires, sending wisps of dissipating black smoke floating across the mess of stiffs. It set the scene like he was a fucking road warrior surrounded by tire fires and death. It was awesome. Dean felt fully alive again for the first time in months.

He strode back towards his companions, a swagger in his step.

“You can sure call him efficient,” Crowley was saying, talking down at Cas who was sitting on a rock. He’d made Efficient sound like Brutal, though. “Five wretched souls in five quick seconds.”

Cas looked up with a faint puzzled frown. “Five demons.”

“Oh, what, and it’s okay to kill demons without any care or concern? Remember your audience, angel.”

The puzzled look intensified. “I killed twenty times that number on my incursion into hell to save Dean.”

“Ah yes, your Righteous man,” said Crowley, giving Dean and the blood over him a pointed look. Bitch.

Crowley smirked as if he’d sunk the final shot in whatever weird game of Hell Eight Ball he was playing. A douche version, no doubt. “Let’s get across here before anymore peons spot us,” he said, gesturing them on like Napoleon. “We should be in Hell soon.”

“Uh, what’s this then?” Dean asked, gesturing at the blasted landscape.

“Boring, mostly.”

“It's called Ge’ena in some texts,” said Cas - being more helpful and informative, not that that explanation really did much for Dean either. “It surrounds the Pit.”

“I can see why you didn’t want to develop here,” Dean said to Crowley, kicking a black rock into a heap of hot shale. “This place blows.”

“Yes, and the commute is a killer,” said Crowley with the air of a long suffering landlord. “Nobody wants to linger here, least of all me. Come on.”

Dean trudged along towards their final destination. He remembered the Pit, the subjective decades he’d spent there. Original grain-fed Dean would wake up sweating and groaning on a regular basis, and then have athletic sex with an angel who didn’t sleep to get over it.

New and Improved Dean could remember all the details and they only made him grin. He no longer feared the Pit; once he kicked down the front door, it was going to be the other way around. They had all three of them been to Hell before, this decor wasn’t going to intimidate them- though it seemed to rile Crowley up, he was glaring at a gibbet hanging over a lava well with a jaundiced look and muttering, “Hackneyed”.

Ah yes, the lava and the heat and all that. Human Dean would have been dead by now, choked by vapors and lightly charbroiled. Dean wasn’t bothered, but the climate wasn’t fun for all that. He stuck the Blade in his back belt and slipped off his jacket, letting it fall to the ground.

Behind him, Cas paused and picked it up.

Dean caught the move as he glanced over his shoulder, and snorted. “Really?”

Cas gave him a stony look. “This is your favorite.”

“It’s just a jacket.”

Cas tucked the jacket in an inside pocket of his coat where it presumably joined the angel blade and lord knew what else without making a bulge. Angels, the stuff they could get away with.

When he saw that Dean was still watching him, Cas said: “You’ll want it back later.” ‘Later’, right, when Dean was all human and cured and cuddly again, that’s what the angel meant. It was an open challenge.

“Fine. Take this too.” Dean faced front again and slid out of the shirt he’d been wearing beneath the jacket. He bundled it up and tossed it over his shoulder - knew without having to check that Cas had caught it on reflex. Knew without having to check that Cas was looking at him.

What could Cas see? Dean hadn’t seen himself as a demon yet - just black eyes when he’d looked in a mirror last time. Maybe because this was his body he was riding or maybe because his powers were still developing. But those demons back there...he’d seen their bodies, but he’d seen _them_ too in the overlay, the greasy twisted little blackened soul remnants in there. They made Crowley look good by comparison - Crowley who looked like a dapper British banker on the outside and was also a roiling shape of dark red smoke around a much more dangerous, powerful figure.

Dean stretched his back, his arms. Slowly. Taking his time. His black t-shirt rode up from his jeans, exposing the Blade. Cas would see both realities too, the flesh and the spirit. Which meant he could see the Demon Knight, but also that sweet ass he regularly rode, wrapped in one of the tighter set of denims that human Dean had had the good fortune of picking this particular morning, some fifteen hours ago.

When Dean glanced over his shoulder again, Cas still had the flannel shirt in both hands and seemed to have forgotten about it. His gaze was on Dean. Those blue peepers rose from the red dust around Dean’s boots, up and up - lagging a bit where you’d expect - until he caught Dean’s smirk and wink.

“Make sure you fold them. Hey, they could do with a clean, too,” said Dean, and turned away.

He was pretty sure that the hooded _look_ drawing a bullseye between his shoulder blades was hotter than the surrounding lava. It made him grin and also hook his hand through his belt loop and drum his ass with his fingers to the beat of ‘Highway to Hell’.

“So are you going to be the kind of demon who kicks puppies?” Crowley asked from up ahead - damn, Dean had forgotten the third wheel.

“Hey, what can I say, I'm hot,” said Dean with a rolling shrug of his shoulders that probably looked even better in a black t-shirt than it did with the rest of the stuff on. He was pretty sure Cas was still watching him as he followed.

“Oh, you’re going to be _that_ kind. Nice buns and bad puns only get you as far as the first circle, my boy.”

“Whatever.”

“Hmm.” Crowley seemed to be chewing something over. ”I have to admit, you’re hard to get a handle on. You see, most demons become so after centuries of torture, given and then applied. It strips out their humanity- well, you know the process. But you skipped the queue and went straight to First Class without any of the usual harrowing. Your brakes are off, your impulse control is tossed to the wind if not fornicated with, and yeah, you’re a bastard and you like to hurt things - more so than usual. But...you’re not dedicated old school evil. You don't take after Cain that much either. The father of murder is more solemn and mopey between his occasional bouts of jihad. And at least he’s consistent. You? So far I don’t think any of us can figure out which way you’ll jump at times. Though one thing is obvious.”

“Yeah, the part where I’ll gut you if you don’t stop boring me.” Why was Crowley always poking, always trying to fit him into a fucking box.

“That you are as pleasant as ever, Winchester,” Crowley finished sardonically. Then, “Ah, and here is where things get serious,” he added, looking up. And up.

Dean blinked. Seemingly out of nowhere, a barrier had appeared. Of sorts. It hung in the air, shimmering with many colors - like an oil-slick rainbow rather than anything fairy-fancy.

Cas had caught up and was looking up with an expression of weary determination, good little soldier that he was.

Crowley gestured. “This is the Skin. The edge of the Pit. Beyond this, we’re in Hell.” He and Cas exchanged looks. “So what’s the plan, angel? You want to stay here and keep our exit clear?”

“No.”

“I’d have wagered you’d say that.”

“What’s going on? How we breaking through this?” Dean asked.

“You and me, Dean, we don’t. We just walk through. This is our front door. Angel here...he’s from the opposite side. He’s not coming in easy.”

Cas was looking at the barrier.

“I can get through it,” he finally said. “But I should not do that here.”

“No, that’ll draw some attention.”

“We’re splitting up?” Dean was surprised, he thought Cas would stick to him like a burr until Abaddon was axed.

“It is somewhat safer this way.” Cas did not look happy. “I need to break the barrier to get in. It’s going to be noisy. But that will draw patrols away from your location. Go on without me for now. I’ll catch up as soon as I can. Be careful.”

He’d said that somewhere in the air between them and without looking Dean in the eye. Then he was gone.

Crowley slapped Dean on the shoulder and jutted his chin at the membrane. He walked through it like it wasn’t even there. Dean did not want to be seen hesitating, though his skin prickled. He pounded the red dirt under his boots and walked right at it.

It gripped just a bit- but it was as consistent and threatening as a soap bubble. And then he was through.

The red dirt, heat and blasted rock motif carried on here, baking under a leprous boil of light on the horizon like a sick and dying sun. But there was a difference from Ge’ena. What seemed to be structures were growing almost organically out of the landscape, twisted blocks like houses being wrung out, walls partially melted or maybe growing like fungi, and blackened basalt roads crunching through at regular intervals like spokes on a wheel, leading to...what Dean originally thought was a mountain range but realized was one massive wall. A fence, rather, metal posts as big as skyscrapers, chains and spikes and barbs the size of semis hanging between them, with links you could drive a tank through. To say it looked foreboding would be an understatement; it looked like the chain-link fence around Satan’s junkyard. The whole thing was twisted and ugly and solid and _real_ , in a way nothing back on earth had been.

“Welcome home,” Crowley said calmly.

Dean felt a hellhound growl rumble deep in his throat. Home? No. Never. Yet where would home be? Back in the bunker with Sam and Castiel and the fake looking background?

“You hate this place,” he challenged.

“I hate a lot about it, it’s not made to be lovable,” said Crowley with a small, wise smile. “But I also carry a large piece of it in me wherever I go. I like the outside better, but only because I have this at my back.”

There was a ‘you’ll see’ in the subtext there. Dean felt the growl in his chest do another round.

They started walking towards the distant barricade, occasionally taking a _step_ through the thick air that dropped them on the other side of a ravine, or a hill, or a ragged wall that looked like it’d grown out of primal magma and solidified into shape. Nobody around yet. The angel was making a fuss somewhere else and had drawn the patrols, Dean guessed. But Cas would be okay; there was only really one guy in this whole hellhole who could cause him grief and he was right here, trudging along and sending up plumes of dust.

“So far so good,” Crowley murmured, looking carefully around a rock promontory. The chain-link fence of the Pit was a few hundred feet away. Its sheer towering mass was giving Dean a headache. “But from now on we can expect resistance. This is where the outer line of defense lies, handpicked troops. Not the twits who can’t cut it here and who ooze out to the surface where they can bully the humans. These are the hardcores who actually like it here. They don’t care who’s on the throne, their only aim is to stay here and be mean and tough, and kill anything from Earth, Heaven or Purgatory that comes around looking at them funny. We’ll wait for the Heavenly Wing Commander here. We’ll need his help to get through that ring of fire.”

“Hmf.”

Crowley turned back and wandered over to Dean. “Doing okay so far?”

“Peachy.”

“For the record, I am sorry about the leash, my boy. You understand we had to take precautions. That angel sure jumped on the chance to have you on a choke chain, though.”

Dean snorted. “Like you wouldn’t?”

Crowley seemed genuinely surprised. “Me? No. Sure, back when you first turned, I tried to instill some work ethics into you - but didn’t I always treat you as an equal?” He actually sounded sincere. In fact Dean felt pretty sure that he was. “I asked you to do to a few jobs for me to develop your professional pride in demonhood. You are a Knight, you have the potential to be big here, my right hand man. But I didn’t want you chained to my throne. It seemed a fair arrangement: sate your inevitable bloodlust on targets I would designate. Isn’t that what the angel is having you do anyway?”

Dean sniffed. Though of course Crowley was right.

That way-too-clever-for-his-own-good bastard was giving him the squinty sideways look again, and the unctuous leer was back. ”...Maybe you just like wearing a collar. If that’s what you wanted, pup, you only needed to ask. When it comes to all that dominating stuff, I’ve learned from the best.”

“And now I need a shower. In lava,” said Dean, striding past him to go recon the stretch of rocks and red gravel ahead. Nothing ominous. Pity.

“I’m surprised you don’t kick against the pricks a bit more. Maybe you’re not as unmanageable as I thought. Castiel must be so relieved you’re cooperating nicely. He's not had to yank that leash once since we left the bunker, just had to give you a deep stare from those pretty blue eyes.”

And that...that burned. Because even if it was part of his long-term plan, it was also true, he was sure. Fuck, could he really let Castiel and Crowley believe he was submitting to this, even for a minute?

...did it matter...?

Dean stopped. Looked inside. And suddenly found his answer - to this and to a lot of other questions too. A revelation. It hadn’t been that hard to find, in final.

“What’s between the angel and me stays between the angel and me,” he said slowly and deliberately, turning and trudging unhurriedly back towards Crowley. “But there’s something you should know.”

Dean lifted the Blade and used it to scratch an itch between his shoulder blades. Crowley frowned, eyes darting from the movement to the space dwindling between them.

“See, Cas is all about the job, and he’s hating every minute of it - which is half the fun.”

“What are you doing?” Crowley took two steps back from Dean’s inexorable approach. “You can’t hurt me-“

“But let’s spitball here,” Dean said pleasantly - a thin slab of shale cracked beneath his boot like a gunshot.

Crowley backpedaled- tripped over a slab and sat down on the ground with a gasp.

Dean was half crouched over him in a second.

“Let’s imagine the angel pulls that holy righteous sword out of his ass for a moment and gets creative,” Dean said with a smile like the Blade hovering an inch from Crowley’s wobbling jowl. “Know what?”

He leaned forward further. The next words were whispered almost right in Crowley’s ear.

“Cas can choose to ride me like a pony and I’d still go for that over taking a single order from you, even ‘hold the elevator’. Was that what you wanted to hear?”

A gargle was his answer.

The Blade patted the black coat’s breast pocket gently. “Thought so. Cool. Good talk.”

Dean straightened up fluidly and turned away, trying to keep the cool indifferent look on his face rather than the flesh-eating grin that wanted to spread there because _yeah_. It was true. Not just the bit about Cas; the whole enchilada. His revelation. His epiphany down in Hell.

Right from the start of last time’s rodeo, Dean had felt pulled in two opposite directions. Crowley had been trying to turn him into a model Knight, reminding him he was a demon - like the black eyes and the lust for the sound of crunching bones didn’t give that away. Yet the harder Crowley pushed, the more Dean would grab some booze, watch a girl shake her caboose and chill. He told himself he just didn’t like giving Crowley - or his own dark urges - the satisfaction. But maybe there’d been a bit of Righteous Man left in him? That’s what Sam had thought, looking at him like he could be saved, like Dean was still the good guy his lil’ brother just _knew_ he was deep down. And he wasn’t that either. His father's expectations, being his brother’s keeper, his failings and all those obligations...that whole massive millstone around his neck had shattered. He felt no remorse and no regret and no guilt anymore, even a rabid joy at the wonderful vicious things he wanted to do now. But as Crowley had so aptly thrown in his face last time: what did that make him? Human? Demon? Which?

But this time, he’d found his answer - a fallout of this road-trip, the excitement of fighting things his own size, of his powerplay with the angel, of Crowley’s attempts to reel him in yet again.

The truth? Demon, human, _who the fuck cared?_ He was Dean. He did what he felt like - booze, hookers, murder, sparing random whackjobs, trying to brain his brother, liking an angel better than Dean’s supposed liege, killing some, sparing others, yeah, it was all in the cards, he owed no logic and no accounts to anyone. Let Crowley try to fit him in a box. He'd have better luck trapping a whirlwind. Let Cas and Sam think they had a handle on him. They'd get a reassessment the very first time they tried to make him do something that bored him; they'd be forced to plead for his cooperation or they'd have to stoop to yanking that leash Cas seemed to think he was too good to use. Dean might have a collar around his neck for now but he was still nobody's bitch.

And when seen like that, life was as beautiful and free as when he sank the Blade into warm flesh.

\- a scrabble and a hiss off to one side-

Oh yeah. Life was giving Dean a reward for finally figuring things out.

Crowley took one look at what was creeping up on them and then he was gone. Even better.


	8. What Goes On In Hell, Stays In Hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This would be the chapter that earned the M rating. It's pretty typical of a lot of my writing, actually ^^;

The difference between these gangbangers and the earlier mooks was as obvious as seeing a hummer dwarfing a Japanese toy car. These were the upper class fellas Crowley had been banging on about. They had human-like bodies in there somewhere - but the gaze tended to get hijacked by the roiling nightmares of their true Beings. 

Dean held out the Blade to his side where it caught the ugly light at the horizon on its dull, bony exterior and its teeth. Dean grinned in much the same way.

“You’re in luck, ladies. They’re playing our song.”

The first one died instantly. There were eight of them and they were not doing the stupid ‘attack one at a time’ thing either. Four of them hurled themselves at his limbs to pin him down, completely ignoring their dead friend.

Dean flexed, dodged, spun around- ripping out one of their throats as he slipped the mousetrap, and then he _moved_ \- flickering through thin air to a spot right behind the furthest mark. He took that chittering black horny head off in one clean swipe. Almost got distracted by the sheer beauty of the Blade’s swing, like some unclean geometry.

Somebody grabbed him from behind - they could teleport too. Dean threw back his head and bone crunched and gross ichor spewed. Dean rolled the stunned, bleeding creature over his shoulder, tripping up the one leaping at him. He jabbed up with the Blade in much the same movement so that the creature sank his own guts onto it as he fell.

A weird noise started deep in Dean’s chest and trickled out of his mouth, like the bastard offspring of a growl and a rebel yell. Two of the cannon fodder on the outskirts of the fight hesitated, big bad scaly things that they were and all.

Too late, boys. It’s all in from here on out!

Cas had said only humans could feel real regret and real joy. Maybe that was true. But the exultation that ripped through Dean as he dodged, flickered through air and sheathed the Blade through brains, that wild ride, that fucking killing high...it had to be the next best thing. 

Dean caught a blow to his forearm, nutted the bastard, then cut down at a tangent through his head like putting a machete through a watermelon. Then he spun around- hey, where were all the targets? 

He caught one at a run just as the bastard tried to scramble away- and the last was hoofing it like a little _bitch_ back towards the fence. Son of a-

Dean _flew_. The sick air in this land had finally given him his own wings, ugly and twisted and black but his and his alone. He landed in a jet of dust ahead of the coward, plowing the gravel beneath his boots. But he’d overshot his mark. The goon had jumped back, and he had space to play with as well as his own teleporting abilities; it was going to be like cornering a desperate rabbit. Dean got ready-

A flicker of light, as unlike the sick boil at the horizon as virtue was far from sin.

The demon seized and writhed like a landed fish. Cas had materialized right behind him and stuck his angel blade through the back of the mark’s skull and out his forehead like it was a day at the office. He still had his other hand in his trench coat pocket and an unruffled look on his face that just capped it off, and the only thing that went through Dean’s brain right then was _yum_.

“More are coming,” Cas informed him collectedly, yanking out his blade and using the tip to point to the left where a black wave like a small tsunami thundered towards them; demons powering their way over the twisted landscape, bodies ensconced in the black aura of their power.

“Fuck, we need to cap all these yahoos before they run to mama? How many-“

“I counted a dozen. A standard pack. I think they will stand their ground rather than run right away.” Cas looked both a little constipated and a tiny bit amused in a wry way. He hadn’t bothered to ask where Crowley was hiding. “When I broke through, I made myself appear less than I am. Possibly a little injured as well.”

“Dragged a little Cherub-chum in front of their noses, huh?” Dean chuckled approvingly, falling in at his side.

"One of us needs to take on their main force while the other picks off the outliers and any trying to run," said Cas, speaking quickly and precisely.

"Dibs."

"On which-"

"All of them, but I'll let you flank, you fly better than I do."

Can merely nodded and walked towards the oncoming riptide, blade flicking out, which was really the best of answers. 

The demons landed with small explosions that blew dirt and rocks into the air. Grotesque shapes with memories of their former human forms grafted onto them like a formality, like they’d stapled on their previous bodies’ flayed skins. They were armed with a variety of weapons and they looked real serious, which was just great. Dean let out a happy whoop and hit the buffet.

Once again, the bastards failed to be entirely stupid - good! - and attacked by threes, using their greater numbers to overwhelm their opponents. Some were armed with ugly javelins - good thing these were the old-fashioned Pit forces though, because if they’d ever listened to Crowley, they’d be armed with angel-bullet machine guns. As it were-

Dean waded into the heart of the melee to avoid the range weapons and to get their attention. He let two bastards hook his arms while the third wound up a machete to gut him. Dean’s left leg shot out into the critter’s guts, his right leg kicked him in the shoulder and he used the momentum to somersault over the hold on his arms, loosening them enough to get the Blade into one ugly, then spinning around to behead the other while machete-guy was still reeling from the shove. The poor boob reeled right into the Blade as Dean materialized behind him. Three down. 

A glance over his shoulder to spot the distance fighters- 

One javelin thrower was already dead while the other was shuddering and dying around an angel blade through its black ugly heart. Dean realized he’d known from the start Cas would take those first. Now they were on the dance floor, he and Dean were like clockwork. 

Somebody hit Dean in the head, a little reminder that the angel had the outfield, however much this climate didn’t suit him, and that Dean should pay attention to his own brawl. 

The injury healed almost immediately - much to the surprise of the loser who’d hit him. Apparently he thought Dean was an ordinary off-brand made-in-Taiwan demon who could get ganked by Hell weapons. Couldn’t be more wrong, ugly. Dean was Dean and ugly was dead, the Blade shoving through the soft underside of his jaw, up through his maw and right into his brain. Dean could see the Blade’s teeth sparkling red and wet at the back of the demon’s throat through his gaping mouth, and he thought that was just hilarious. 

Once again the enemy reacted correctly, concentrating their remaining forces on taking down one of their targets quickly. Dean staggered as he barely managed to dodge a blow attempting to kneecap him. Another tried to pin his leg with a spear, slicing through his jeans and calf. They’d bring him down like wolves brought down a wild buck on a nature program. 

The angel blade spun through the air and scored one of his attackers in the back of the neck. Then Cas was there. He grabbed two chittering frights by the foreheads, slammed them bodily into the ground. Light burned- but he had an attacker on his six!

A desperate critter was trying to bash Dean with a mallet. Dean didn't lose time retaliating, he let himself drop straight down under the blow. His left palm hit dirt. He kicked up and nearly took the sad sack’s head off with his boot. Then he _moved_ through thin air to appear behind the bastard trying to brain his angel. Cas hadn’t turned around, he was finishing his two marks off like he knew Dean was going to catch the one at his back. The goon twisted on himself, feeling danger coming from behind, which meant he got a close-up of the Blade going into his right eyeball. Squish. Dean didn’t pause, he threw out one hand without even thinking-

The last critter who’d been running away stopped like it had hit a wall thirty feet off, its joints and bones creaking with an effort to move. Dean’s fingers gripped empty air, tightened. 

Cool! I didn’t know I could do that! thought Dean, a second before thinking, Er, now what? Can I Darth Vader the guy?

Then Cas was there, hand on the critter’s forehead. Fizz-crack-flash of a smite. The demony bozo convulsed and fell. Cas gave Dean a faint nod of recognition for the good catch. Then he went to wrench his blade out of the body of one of his other vics and turned to terminate the last survivor, starting to stir and whimper, still dazed from Dean’s kick to the brainbox. 

And then there was just the two of them, standing over a field of corpses. 

The air rushed through Dean’s lungs as he looked around, and then at the angel, blood dripping down his blade and smattering his coat like a boss. Warrior of the lord indeed. 

More than that. All those other holy dicks weren’t here, after all. It was Cas who was standing over a squad of ganked demons like it was all in a day’s work. Those years in Purgatory and Earth have changed him - but he’d never been one of those cookie cutter angels to begin with. Out of all the Holy Bitch Brigade, he chose to help the frail, filthy humans fight for their planet, for themselves. Out of all the angels in Heaven, only Cas had Fallen. Fallen for Dean. 

The smell of blood was like musk, like the smell of lightning on Wings, like the finest whiskey slipping over the tongue...

Cas glanced up and then gave Dean an interrogative look as he caught the gaze fixed on him. The way Dean was starting to circle towards him, stepping over bodies. 

“Dean?”

And he just had to say Dean’s name right then, in that voice made for sex and holy war. 

Dean caught him in a flash.

Muscles and Wings and Grace tightened like a gun’s recoil spring. The angel blade was in his hand - but they’d fought side by side, Cas had felt the heat, he’d felt the _rightness_ of it, the angel had seen Dean in the demon; he didn’t let fly with a stab.

His back hit a corroded wall. Cas made a small 'hnf' sound that Dean caught in his mouth and on his tongue.

The stone creaked behind Cas as Dean did the same thing with their bodies as he was doing with their mouths.

Cas managed to tear his face away. “Dean-” it was an honest to god growl - in _that_ voice. He sounded angry...but he wasn’t fighting nearly as hard as he could. Dean didn’t think the angel would pretend to be a prude or picky about his squeezes not being all demony - not after giving Meg a full-on cavity check with his tongue up against a wall that one time. 

“You know what they say,” Dean whispered against the faint stubble on Cas’s cheek. “What goes on in hell stays in hell- and you’re not going to tell me you could be worse off with the holy crowd than you already are. Or that you care at this stage of the game.”

Cas was breathing hard, looking at Dean up close with that forbidding air of his, so different from his usual puzzled nerdy expression. This now was the look of an angel who did not fuck around, who leveled armies if they had the misfortune to piss him off. If he thought that was going to scare Dean off, however, he pretty much had that the wrong way around. Yeah, Cas could keep that look - it suited him fine. He could keep that sneer because it was a fact like the Word of God on a fucking tablet that if he’d wanted to yank the leash - or just fly away a few feet - he’d have already done so. 

It was also a fact that he was getting hard where Dean was now grinding a thigh. 

Dean leaned in again. Slow. Deliberate. Making sure the angel knew what was going to happen in a few seconds and that it was clear no-one was objecting. 

Their lips met. The kiss was deeper and hard and long. Muscles coiled in protest beneath Dean’s grip, but Cas’s tongue also coiled against his. One hand still gripped the angel blade near Dean’s shoulder...but the other hand was fisting his t-shirt and pulling him in. The First Blade spilled drops of blood as Dean held it over both their heads, arm propped up against the rock. His other arm wound around Cas’s waist, pulled them together - hand mauling that fine ass. Cas’s leg snaked around his, caught him - and hauled him in even harder with what would have been bone-bruising strength if he’d been human. It only made Dean growl avidly into the mouth he was licking wide open. The new angle made it damn easy to rub together in new and interesting ways, and he made sure Cas could feel every inch of just how turned on he was. But it wasn’t an easy thing. This was not a surrender. Because Cas was fucking into this and yet he was fighting it just a bit too. Fighting Dean. Fighting _himself_. Just enough to make it...really fine. 

“Raa, rah, roma- maaaa,” Crowley crooned abruptly right next to them

Dean ripped his lips away. “Really, Crowley? Lady Gaga?”

“’Bad Romance’ is a guilty pleasure, and what can I say, I admire her taste in meat suits.”

Cas turned his head towards Crowley - with no signs of embarrassment for the arm around his waist or his hand gripping Dean’s shoulder. “This...oddly named lady is possessed?”

Thoughts fleeted through Dean’s mind.

_‘Damn me I can’t tell if that’s dumb, adorable or just plain hot’_

_‘I want to rip his clothes off’_

_‘Mark that angel skin with my teeth’_

_‘Show Heaven and Hell that I was the one he was begging to fuck him’_

Crowley glared at him as if he could read those thoughts off Dean’s mind like the subtitles on a porn movie. “Oy. Do I need to get a bucket of cold holy water down here?”

“Fuck off back to where you were hiding, Crowley.” His hand was still pressing against Cas’s ass and their hard-ons were nicely lined up and the King of Hell could go to- well, technically, back to where he came from.

“I wasn’t hiding. Since the defenders from this stretch of wall all came crowding after you two noisemakers, I went and scouted ahead. We’re about to get into the fast lane and to where we’re going. _If_ you two oiks can keep your paws off of each other! Blimey, Seraph, why is the King of Hell having to act like the convent mother superior in this scenario instead of, say, you?”

“‘Cause you look better in a wimple?” Dean answered. That got him a crinkling of little laugh lines around Cas’s eyes, but unfortunately his angel was starting to untangle from him, so the moment was over. Fuck.

“He’s right, we should be moving on,” said Cas in a voice that did not sound regretful - but then again it did not sound like anything, so who knew what emotions were crawling beneath. And he still preferred to address Dean instead of Crowley, as Dean and the little twitching vein in Crowley’s temple both noted.

Score.


	9. Army of Two

The fence towered above them. It was so big it was almost like a physical weight grinding them down. But Crowley led them through one of the chain links. Dean didn’t need to ask; the fact that you could drive a semi through the hole here was in no way relevant to its capacity to keep undesirables out. This was a true barrier, and they were only waltzing through because Crowley had gone and cracked it. 

They passed the fence, and things got weird and fluid. 

Instead of being towered over by Lucifer’s chickenwire, they were in a large corridor. It looked like a cheesy set, something out of a He-Man cartoon. Dean snickered and then laughed outright at Crowley’s pissed expression.

“Has the hell-bitch started redecorating already?”

“No, I suspect someone lazy or utterly passé was in charge of this section. What can I say, I can’t be everywhere at once.”

“And you’re topside if you can swing it.” Dean yanked with amusement at an old-fashioned skull and crossbone banner. He moved forward, following Crowley down a short flight of stairs-

And suddenly he was in a garden that had every kind of toxic plant imaginable and some that came out of a Lovecraftian nightmare.

“Huh?”

“Stick close, both of you. Especially you, Feathers, this place will try to split us up and spit you out.”

“I’m aware,” said Cas dourly.

“Why are things changing?” Dean asked.

“Because we’re in the Pit, boy. You know, I tried explaining this bit to you a few months ago, and granted you were down a whole bottle of tequila by then but I thought you were paying attention.”

“Was there someone good-lookin’ nearby?”

“We were in a stripper club, yes-“

“Then I wasn’t paying attention.” Dean stepped over and then stomped down on a tentacle-plant trying to grab him for purposes that his choice of foreign video material illustrated all too well. “So where to now?” 

“Down,” said Crowley, pointing at a moss-ridden well at the center of the garden. “The landscape is going to get weird and changeable, but as long as we head down-“

“We’ll get to where we’re going. I know this trip. Like the yellow brick road in heaven.”

“Or exactly _not_ like that,” said Crowley with an amused grin as he stepped with complete aplomb onto the lip of the well and let himself drop. “Carry on lads,” echoed up from the depths. Cas went next and Dean followed close behind, mindful of the warning that this place might try to lose them. 

One minute they were in a hallway, the next on a blasted cratered plain like the moon. Things shifted and blurred- and there were Crowley touches now. A room full of cubicles stretching as far as the eye could see with thousands upon thousands of souls bent over some strange paper concoction - probably their lifetime IRS audit documentation or something equally vile and sadistic. 

Thanks to Crowley and his better knowledge of this plane, there were no more fights, but that was okay, even the Mark’s constant homicidal itch was now reduced to a satisfied purr. 

Finally they went down sets of stairs that twisted every which way - even upside down at one point. Then Crowley opened an emergency Exit door and stomped on through.

“Home sweet home,” Crowley muttered (not looking all that happy about it) as they made their way through corridors that appeared a whole lot firmer now. It looked like an old-fashioned castle, not quite as cheesy as the first corridor they’d been in, but still a lot of sconces and banners and tapestries which Crowley glared at in passing. But there were a ton of Crowley touches too. A lot of portraits of presumably deceased and damned personnel were on the floor or stacked on tables, and flow charts and pie diagrams had taken their place. Some of the banners had been rolled up and large motivational posters replaced them, to Dean’s utter lack of surprise (had to admire the King of Hell’s more subtle touches). From a distance through a window, Dean caught sight of the Interminable Queue of the Damned, which gave him the willies just as much as Alastair’s workshop ever had. 

This was the palace of the King of Hell, and all they needed to dodge now were hurrying bureaucrats sweating blood as they hauled paper around. Seriously, Dean could almost see Abaddon’s point at times; this just was Hell in the most un-fun way possible.

“Nearly there,” said Crowley. “We just need to cross the courtyard and climb up to the roof for a birds-eye view of-“

The courtyard was full of apparently dead trees and, oh yeah, the abode of the two biggest, ugliest, meanest hellhounds Dean had ever set eyes on, bounding towards their small group.

First Blade and angel blade hissed through the air as Dean and Cas got ready to meet the charge-

“Down, boys!” Crowley snapped - talking to them, it seemed, because when he addressed the two Hellhounds who had screeched to a halt in front of him, his tone was positively gooey. “How are my two pretty girls today? Who wants a belly rub?”

“Crowley, we’re wasting time,” said Cas tightly.

“Who’s a good guard dog! Yes you are! Give it a minute, angel.”

“All this slobbering is turning my stomach,” Dean growled. 

“They’re hellhounds, they do drool-“

“I was talking about you.”

This got him a nasty look, but at least Crowley straightened up.

“Good girls! Who wants to play fetch with the invisible ball!”

The two hellhounds bounded off to where Crowley had pretended to toss something.

“Damn, never thought to try that with the one that gutted me back in the day,” Dean muttered. 

“Oh, it only works with those two. They’re big, ugly and mean and by far the dumbest of the litter. They’re too stupid to go on patrol, that’s why they’re guarding the courtyard.” Crowley waved off to one side towards two kennels the size of garages, with ‘Deanna’ and ‘Samantha’ written in pink paint on the eaves.

Dean was still thinking of the best comeback when Castiel, all business, hurried them on towards the corkscrew stairs off the courtyard, leading straight up a tower to the roof.

Crowley bowed them through the door at the top. It opened up onto a flat roof with nifty gargoyles for cover. Scoping it out side by side, Cas and Dean finally spotted their target ten floors down and a couple hundred yards away. She was strutting around what seemed to be the assembly grounds at the center of a heap of military barracks. Hundreds of burly demons like the kind they’d fought outside the Wall hunkered around her, troops apparently gathered at her command. A dozen closest to Abaddon were holding down a few of the bureaucrat demon types. 

Abaddon had a whip in her hand and was plying it on the helpless mooks in a way that made Dean’s lips curl appreciatively. But only for a moment. What was the point of hurting something that couldn’t fight back? That was what counted. Breaking that resistance, conquering, mocking it and then sticking in the Blade for a finish. Or not, if mercy was even worse than death. Abaddon was just-...

Dean frowned. He was aware he had an untapped wellhead of power at his disposal, but he was more comfortable sticking the First Blade into stuff. So he was struggling with his perception, his weird overlay. 

“Hey, Crowley. Does Abaddon seem...off to you?”

Silence.

As one, Dean and Castiel looked back at an empty space. Then they stared at each other.

“Figures,” grunted Dean.

“Yes,” sighed Castiel.

“So. Cas.” Dean looked back at Abaddon. “What do you see?”

“A demon.”

Dean grabbed him by the chin and rotated his head in the right direction. “When you look over at Big Bad, I mean, not at me.”

“A demon. That’s all I see around here.”

“Demons all the way down then. Okay, but does she look...kosher to you?”

Cas deliberated for a few seconds, head tipped to one side. “She looks the same, yes, but her aura is not quite as pungent as when I last saw her. Her resurrection may have weakened her.”

“Pity.”

That got him a curious glance.

“Hey, I don’t like to tango a lady with a limp, sorry, that’s not how I roll.”

Cas gave him a faintly exasperated look, then he leaned up against one of the gargoyles, keeping out of sight. “I see no sign of a summoning construct that would be necessary to raise Cain. It’s likely deep inside the palace, in her seat of power. We should wait until she leaves her troops behind and heads back in before we attack.”

“Boring,” said Dean for the form, though really, there were quite a lot of GI Demons down there.

“Bear with it,” was the dry advice he got from the angel.

Abaddon had stopped her whipping frenzy and was now walking up and down the lines with a lot of gesturing like some kind of general - which was funny because she was in cut-off shorts and a tied-on tank top, as far as Dean could see. Which confirmed, in passing, that that Father Calvo demon had _not_ put any seal of Effervescence or whatever on the bitch, because it would surely be visible if it were. Idiot horn dog demon. (Dean had not bought Crowley’s ‘it won’t work on a meat-suit’ excuse for a red-hot minute, because Crowley had given his unavoidable tell that showed he was lying, ie, he’d opened his mouth.)

“Think she’s planning some kind of raid upstairs?” Dean asked curiously, after watching for a minute.

“Can’t you hear her?”

“Me? No.” Damn, he hadn’t thought to try. He was still thinking as a human sometimes. Which was no big, since he had a pair of angel ears on call. “What’s she going on about?”

“Rounding up hold-outs, finding Crowley, doing various things to his genitalia, then vague plans for taking over Earth and setting up outposts to oppose Heaven,” said Cas in a tone that said, ‘the usual’. 

“Huh.”

“You are surprised?”

“...A bit. Maybe. You never met her except briefly. I’ve had several run-ins with her. She’s normally a bit less bang and a lot more gun, if you see what I mean. Less mouth, more plans.” He might rag on her, but Abaddon had been no joke, she’d been a deadly, cunning warrior, and if she’d had other Knights with her rather than a bunch of cowardly weak hell-hos, she’d have done considerably more damage. Dean had taken on the Mark because he’d really felt up against the wall without Cas around to help. 

“She could be firing up her troops,” Cas suggested. “From what Crowley said, she can expect a lot of passive resistance there. Most of them don’t want to come out on one side or the other.”

“Hm, yeah, makes sense- ah, finally.”

She’d swung around and was leaving with a sashay of her hips that confused Dean, because Abaddon had a rapist vulture sexuality, sure, but she usually kept it on a leash. Was she trying to fire up the troops or _fire up_ the troops here?

Never mind. The hour had finally arrived. He was about to face off with the hell bitch again and the First Blade seemed to be keening ‘oh yes please!’ at the thought. 

It was going to be a fight...but he could also make contingency plans. Like, how could he get Abaddon to release his seal? Could he direct her to hit his chest? There might be a way to get her to free him before he cut her throat. 

The thought of allying with Abaddon occurred to him just so that he could take that idea and punch it in the nuts. Abaddon was tough but she was _boring_. Why waste his time on a hell tramp when he had an angel to play with?

“How we going to follow her?” Dean asked as Abaddon entered the palace, ten stories or so below them.

For answer, Cas put a hand on Dean’s shoulder.

There was a massive WHOMP of air - less a graceful lift of Wings and more like the bite of a chopper’s blades, poor angel was struggling. But on the plus side? Their arrival just inside the palace door slammed them shut on the downdraft _and_ knocked Abaddon out of her swagger and onto her knees, twenty feet up ahead.

“Clever angel,” Dean crowed, surging to his feet and the Blade ready to sing. Cas was struggling into a crouch behind him, winded. No matter, the Seraph had gotten Dean close to the target, now it was Dean’s turn, Cas could go sit on the bench and have a smoke.

Abaddon scrambled to her feet- took one look at Dean, spun around and went sprinting down the hallway as fast as her bitch-boots could carry her.

Dean was so surprised he just stood there for a whole second, blinking. He glanced quickly over his shoulder and he could have used Cas as a mirror no doubt. But then the angel staggered to his feet with concern tightening his features. 

“Cain! She may have everything further along than we thought - she must have gone to raise him!”

“Without gloating about it?” Dean took three uncertain steps forward.

“After her!” Cas shoved at his shoulder and they both broke into a run, thundering down the hallway, sending demons bureaucrats and lost souls screaming and diving for cover.

They almost lost her- but Cas must have heard the clickety-click of those heels up ahead with his super-hearing, because he darted down a hallway. Huge wooden double doors fifteen feet high blocked the far end of the corridor. Cas gestured as he ran- the doors shook on their hinges but stood fast. Until Dean plowed into them. He didn’t know what he did exactly, kind of thought nasty thoughts at them and imagined himself to weigh as much as a tank and _boom!_ One door went flying into the room, the other crashed back on its hinges and then listed sideways sadly.

The throne room, apparently. Place of honor hosted a black metal seat that looked all Doom and Damnation - with a nice comfy red cushion on it that suggested Crowley liked a bit of padding for the tush. The place was large, all colonnades - and a balcony off to one side. Like Crowley was the bloody Queen of England, to go and wave at his troops or something. Which, knowing the Winchester luck, was actually what was outside right this minute, and where Abaddon was heading at full speed. 

A flicker and a blast of air. Castiel rose from a crouch with his blade ready, banners falling all around him from the force of his Wings deploying. 

Abaddon spun around - 

Dean was advancing towards her with the First Blade drawn and a nasty grin on his mug. 

Big A spun and then spun around again as if she couldn’t figure out which of the two men marching towards her was the most terrifying.

What the hell?

Dean stopped dead in his tracks. “Okay, that’s it. If you’re Abaddon then I’m a flying monkey. Who the hell are you, sister?”

The creature wearing Abaddon’s old meatsuit gave him a hunted glance - then she threw her head back and black smoke poured out.

Cas was there in a flash of light and heavenly mojo, and as Dean watched, amazed, he force-fed that smoke back _into_ the ginger trollop. Then he grabbed her by the throat, angel blade drawing back.

“Wait!” the bitch squealed. “I- I’m not Abaddon!”

“We know,” said Cas coldly while Dean behind him chuckled “Yeah, we figured.”

“I’m- I’m a nobody! I’m- I’m-...I was just-...I-...” and then she gulped.

“Where’d you get the meat suit?” Dean asked curiously. “I left that there body with a whole bunch of holes in a Cleveland hotel.” Demons must have grabbed it and fixed it. He’d not thought about the possibility that another demon could smoke into that, he was still thinking like a human. This fact would irritate him if the situation before him wasn’t so funny.

“I...the king ordered us to take it back to Hell...for examination...um...” The demon was giving the corners of the throne room a very shifty look, and granted Dean wouldn’t want to stare at an angel going all holy righteous an inch from his face, but...

But it was the amount of sheer horrified shame exuding from the demon that clued him in. Like a seminary student who’d been caught on his computer with the filthiest porn ever. 

“You’re Father Calvo, aren’t you.”

Cas’s eyes flickered to Dean’s in sudden understanding. “The demon Crowley thought had resurrected her? Yes, it sounds like he’d have the magical arts to mask his aura and mimic Abaddon’s.”

“You fixed the meat suit...and you just couldn’t resist taking the red hot red-head for a ride,” Dean leered. “Oh that just rocks. But you actually kicked Crowley off the throne?”

“Um- I- that is -” This version of the ginger bitch had a high pitched quavery voice that the real Abaddon would never have sported. 

“You got caught up in the whole thing and went overboard.” Dean almost felt a faint sympathy for the fool, buried beneath a mountain of amused scorn. “Cas, I’ll make you a deal. You can keep this leash on me for the rest of eternity as long as you let me be the one to tell Crowley.”

Cas made an exasperated sound in his throat. His blade was still in stab mode. He did not seem to be finding amusement in the situation.

“So you did not raise Abaddon. Is it possible to do so?”

Calvo looked worriedly at the blade that had gotten closer, but didn’t answer.

“And Cain?” Cas added tightly.

Calvo’s lips pinched and he looked at Cas. “Yes, it is possible, and I have demons doing it right now so if you kill me they’ll go ahead and do it!”

“Huh-uh,” said Dean, snorting into his hand.

Cas’s eyes narrowed. “The. Truth.”

“That is the truth!”

“Look, dude, just tell the angel what he wants to know before he goes and does something biblical to you,” Dean suggested. 

“I just-“

The angel blade was now an inch from Calvo’s left eye.

“I have tortured your kind before,” said Cas - a true statement made all the more sphincter tightening by the steady measured delivery. “They have always told me what I wanted to know sooner or later. I think you will tell me sooner.”

If Cas’s tone hadn’t done the trick, Dean’s sudden look of keen interest would probably have clenched the deal. Calvo looked like he was about to puke, or faint, or both, which just looked wrong on the brassy bitch’s face. “I...no,” he said in the tiniest voice,

“No?”

“It’s not possible. To raise Abaddon. Or Cain. I don’t know if it’s possible in any case to bring a dead demon back, but especially- I mean- it’s- anything killed by the First Blade-“

“Stays dead,” Dean concluded, patting his beauty. “There there, girl, I knew you hadn’t let me down.”

“So this was all for nothing?” Cas said in a low voice that was the first menacing rumble down the slope of a pyroclastic flow of holy fire.

“Come on,” said Dean, catching the arm with the blade - which didn’t move a millimeter, his angelfood cake was _pissed_. “Admit it, it’s just a little bit funny.”

“Funny?!” Cas spun on him-

Calvo/Abaddon slipped out of his grip like a slab of wet soap and darted towards the balcony, catching himself on the stone balustrade and drawing in a breath to screech. Shit! The army of horns outside! 

Before either of them could react however-

In a flash of red smoke and light, Crowley appeared right behind Calvo and stuck some kind of evil looking harpoon right through the meat suit’s chest. All the way through, the point grinding out with blood, gore and vittles, until Crowley’s hands hit the body on the back and shoved it almost off the balcony. 

There was a dull red flash from the meat suit and the corpse went limp. 

Crowley gave the harpoon an extra twist - completely unnecessary, but he was obviously rocking the Braveheart moment.

That’s when Dean realized they had an audience. A good sized army outside the balcony, now staring up at them all. 

In the absolute hush that followed, Crowley’s sarcastic tones rolled down Hell’s landscape as he stood over his skewered rival. 

“Daddy’s home.”

He lifted the harpoon slowly - an ugly black thing that looked like it’d come out of one of Lucifer’s crypts, it ate the sick light of Hell and thrived on it. Crowley _yanked_ \- Abaddon’s body fell to the ground, raising puffs of dry dirt two stories below, while the head was now on the crude barbed point in a handy display of Hell mojo.

Crowley walked back into the room like he was carrying an umbrella over his shoulder. He marched over to his throne, stuck the end of the harpoon into one of the twisted curls of metal, and sighed as he glanced up at the severed head.

“Gauche. So old world. Medieval really, but the electorate demands it.” Then he sat down. 

“My good subjects,” he said, waving forward, which was when Dean realized they had an audience in house too. A few low level mooks and bureaucrats, also some soldiers who looked tougher in the overlay. They were not looking at him or Cas, though, just Crowley.

“As you can see, I’ve dealt with the upstart once and for all. I don’t usually go in for the brutal display, but this is the only thing these hell tarts understand. Oh, that reminds me, my army of two here left quite a lot of dead bodies on our way in. Somebody organize a clean-up detail.” 

He’d waved at Dean and Cas halfway to the balcony. Dean’s jaw was around his breastbone. Cas was giving Crowley a narrow eyed look that promised something on the level of all the Plagues of Egypt rolled into one handy package.

“I need to have a word with my trusted allies,” Crowley added with a regal wave. “Leave.”

The gathered two dozen demons gave him uncertain glances-

_“LEAVE!”_

It was like a hurricane wind. Several of the goons were knocked over, even Dean had to take a step back to catch his balance. 

The throne room was empty and quiet other than a sonorous growl. Dean realized it’d come from his throat and that he’d taken two steps towards the throne. The First Blade’s distant war drums were beating in his temples.

And Cas’s hand was on his shoulder.

“Castiel.” Dean could barely recognize his own voice. “Take this fucking leash off me now and stop touching me or so help me-“

“Give me thirty seconds.”

“Huh?”

Cas leaned forward, pressed against Dean’s side, looking over the shoulder his hand still grasped. “There’s an entire army outside that can see what’s going on in here.”

“I. Don’t. Care. He _used_ us-“

“Yes. Not my point. If you kill him, there will be a power vacuum in Hell. The soldiers outside came here because Abaddon, a Knight, rallied them. If they see you kill the King of Hell, you will perforce become one of the contenders for the throne. Is that really what you want?”

That had not been the argument Dean had expected - and from the way Crowley’s eyebrows were acting like dancing caterpillars, neither had he.

Neither had they expected Cas to phrase it like it was Dean’s choice either. The angel had his hand on the leash after all.

But if it was his choice, then it was an easy one. “Lord it over this bunch of massive douchenozzles? Fuck no.”

The hand pressed his shoulder and then released him in silent acceptance of that statement.

“I have to let him live?” Dean whined (in a manly Hell Knight kind of way).

“It’s your choice,” said Cas, taking a few steps in the direction of the balcony. “He’s hurt you more than me. By a narrow margin. I’m willing to live with the devil I know, but if you want to destroy him, then do it. If those troops decide to interfere, I will keep them off your back,” added the bad-ass angel of the lord as if addressing an annoying little detail.

Crowley was puffing and making some kind of noise about being in his center of power- it wasn’t even static... 

Killing Crowley was like a burning buzzing cancer in Dean’s brain, like it was going to eat its way out of his face if he didn’t soothe it. The Mark on his arm felt like it had been freshly branded with a red hot iron.

...But really, was the little zit worth that much aggro? And the fallout that would come after? Also, Cas, blade in hand, was standing between Dean and an army of hell-monkeys right now. Cas was a holy terror alright, but he wasn’t at full speed down here, and they still had to fight their way out of of Hell afterwards without the element of surprise this time.

Besides, if he killed Crowley, he’d not be able to rub his face in the whole Calvo thing for the next stretch of forever. 

Dean sheathed the First Blade back into his jean’s belt and turned his back contemptuously on the king of this shitty locale.

“C’mon, Cas, let’s blow this taco stand. It stinks down here.”

“That’s the sulfur and brimstone,” Cas informed him earnestly, making Dean roll his eyes. 

“Hmf,” Crowley said. “Glad we got that sorted. If you two don’t mind, I’ll walk you out.” 

“We do mind.”

“Like that you don’t have to bludgeon your way past the guards who’ve been rallying since your heavenly crumpet invaded Hell and alerted them all. They’ve been gathering for awhile now.” 

Bastard sounded like he was doing him a favor.

“Sure I can’t kill him? Just a little bit?” Dean muttered.

“Better the devil we know,” Cas sighed after a few seconds of reflection. “Come on, let us leave this...taco stand to its ruler. They deserve each other.”

“Amen,” Dean snorted, which was not something said down here very often. 

And so they left.


	10. Awaiting Revelation In All The Wrong Places (And Getting It On In The Meantime)

Not only did Crowley get them out of Hell without further inconvenience, he even returned with them to the bunker like a guy walking his prom date back to the fucking door. Dean at least got his pound of flesh out of the affair by telling Crowley aaaaaall about Calvo/Abaddon, and that was fun. Especially when Crowley tried to pretend he didn’t care and that it was all ‘about the spin’ - while that little vein in his temple twitched and twitched...Cas still didn’t seem to get the humor in the situation, and from the way his expression got grimmer and his eyes, as they rested on Crowley, darker and darker the closer to the bunker they got, Dean was half expecting the angel to stab the King of Hell in the throat for some reason or other. Reasons certainly abounded, but Dean couldn’t figure out what was twisting Cas up in a knot _now_. Still, the angel restrained himself. Apparently some kind of truce had been declared between Heaven and Hell. Great, Peace in Our Times and all that.

Of course Dean knew what was awaiting him on his return, and it seemed stupid to just go along with it on the surface. But Crowley’s presence nixed the idea of fighting back, or even engaging the ‘hurt Cas’ plan. Dean suspected the very reason Crowley was sticking around was to see Dean fight against the cure and force Cas to yank the leash. But with the seal still on him, Dean would end up in that chair sooner or later regardless, and so he decided spontaneously that pissing off Crowley by refusing to behave the expected way ranked higher than a hapless struggle against Cas and the inevitable. 

So the very long day ended with Dean strapped to a fucking chair in the fucking dungeon getting shot up with fucking pain juice that’d formerly been his own blood. It sucked, especially since Sam, doing the honors, had taken limp-dick Dean’s instructions seriously and gagged his demonized bro for most of it. He’d only removed it at the very end when Dean’s breathing became labored and everyone was a little worried.

“Last shot,” Sam said, sounding drained. 

“Finally,” Crowley muttered. He was _still there_ , the little bitch, outside the devil trap and lounging about like he was in command of this whole shebang, a glass of good scotch going down the hatch in small glasses - why Cas had not yet cut out his kidneys was a mystery, because it sure looked like he wanted to whenever he glanced that way.

Cas stirred from where he’d been leaning against the wall for the past four hours of pain. 

“May I give it to him?” he asked.

Sam shot him a look that was trying to hide how hot and angry and hurt it was. “Fine,” he said a bit reluctantly and gave the angel the syringe. 

Cas came up to the chair where Dean was strapped - and handcuffed and also chained with a padlock out of hand’s reach for good measure, the Sasquatch had learned his lesson. 

Dean ignored how every one of his sinews, muscles and bones ached, and grinned up at the angel, who was staring down at the needle he held in his hand.

“Go ahead, halo. You can kick me to the curb for now, but I’ll be seeing you again.”

“I _know_.”

Those two words, tight and pained, steely and sharp, dropped like an executioner’s axe. Sam stiffened and half uncrossed his arms, staring at the angel, and Crowley choked on his scotch.

In the fragile hush that followed, Cas put the needle on the floor. Then he knelt between Dean’s legs like it was the most natural thing to do, trench coat swept aside, elbows on Dean’s knees and hands clasped together like he was kneeling at a confessional pew, those blue eyes staring straight up into Dean’s.

“As long as your deaths are accidental, we can cure you,” Cas said matter of factly. “But all we’ve found on the Mark so far gives us no hope of ever getting it off. Sooner or later, your human soul will succumb to it. You’ll be nothing more than a rabid animal. But the strength of a Knight of Hell gives you more control over the Mark, as it did with Cain. On the day the Mark takes you over, the best option - the only option Sam and I will have left is to let you fall into this corruption again.”

Dean had seen people kneel in church like that, staring up at statues of angels.

“I’m sorry we were tricked into this extreme. But since we were, I had to find out what it would be like when it happened. I had to know if there was still enough of you left even now that I could stand it.”

Well that was an interesting take on some of what had happened down in Hell...

“So? What’s the verdict?” Dean asked curiously.

Cas stared up at him. He had yet to blink. “You are a conundrum. A demon, but different from the Crowleys and the Abaddons of this world. More like Cain, I think. You’re not the unthinking monster I was afraid you’d be. You’re not human either. Something in between. Existing on your own terms for the sake of revolt, blasphemy and fighting. Maybe redeemed by your preference for hard targets who can fight back.” 

Dean grinned. “Sounds like you got my demonic number.”

“Hm. Yes. I think my Brethren would say you’re a lot like that as a human too,” said Castiel a little flatly.

“Seconded,” said Crowley in the background, saluting the Heavens with his glass.

Dean’s grin widened. “Ahh, I guess I’m still me, then, I just have the brakes off. Maybe you don’t have to stick me with that needle just yet. Keep me around awhile. You got me on a leash, right? It’s pretty damn obvious by now Crowley’s up to something again, and who knows what else is out there?“

“You are still yourself. More than I’d anticipated,” Cas admitted slowly. “You’re also the demon who tried to brain Sam with a ball-peen hammer before I stopped you a few months ago.”

Dean tilted his head. “Ah yes. Good times,” he said nostalgically. 

Cas had yet to blink or look away. “You took care not to flaunt that side of yourself this time around. Didn’t you.”

So he’d noticed. Dean could have made The Plan a long-term one; continued to play up the redeemed-demon aspect into his next bout of being dead and damned. It might have paid dividends later, induced Cas to loosen the leash at a future date. But...nah. Even with Crowley here, it was now the bottom of the ninth. Seriously, Cas had been a straight shooter with him all this time, he’d been remarkably upfront and honest despite provocation. It was fair that Dean lay down his cards in turn. 

He gave the angel a cruel carefree smile, ducking his head. “Yeah, you’re right. The only reason I never considered joining Abaddon is because I can’t stand the bitch and Hell bores me stupid. But now I’ll be straight. You take off this muzzle, know what happens? I kill Sam. I kill Crowley. But I won’t kill you. That’d be too easy. I’ll just let you count the bodies in my wake. That’ll kill you a dozen times over, am I right?”

Castiel’s eyes did not even flicker.

Something in Dean’s chest stilled.

“Would you kill Sam? I’ll concede Crowley,” Cas added with some asperity (everybody ignored the snort from the background).

“Dude, you yourself just said-“

“You had chances to kill Sam last time, but you went to lengths to keep away from him instead. When you did attack him, it was when he had you cornered and was about to cure you: extinguish the demon in you to restore your humanity. As far as _you_ were concerned, that was execution by lethal injection. And his insistence that it was for your own good - that would be irritating. That’d tip the scales from avoidance to retaliation, I think. Back when he was soulless, Sam nearly killed Bobby when you tried to restore him for much the same reason; self-preservation without any moral brakes.” 

Dean glanced involuntarily up at Sam in time to see a wash of all kinds of emotions run over his little brother’s face like a flash flood. It should have made Dean gleefully happy; this was some prime head-messing material the angel was dishing out for free in Dean’s stead. But instead all he felt was a surge of disappointment and anger as his hard gaze fastened back on Cas. It was irrational. The whole plan had been about convincing Cas to stick him in the same ‘good guy’ box as Sam had, yet now that the plan had succeeded and he was about to rip that away, all he felt was angry. 

“Come on, Seraph. Are you really that dumb?”

“I’m not saying that’s what happened. I don’t know. I’m not sure you know yourself,” said Cas calmly. “I do know that I won’t release the seal in any case. The three of us will feel safer giving you a guardrail.”

The three- Dean hoped to god the bloody angel was adding Crowley to that count, Cas could not possibly think _Dean_ wanted-

He felt his lips curl back from his teeth. “For fuck’s sake, Castiel, you’re completely out of your tree. Listen carefully. Your Dean is _dead_ \- or he will be one day. It’s just me and my desire to rip off your feathers with my fingernails.” Though not right away because-...reasons.

Cas was still looking at him as if this neither surprised nor upset him.

“Don’t you get it?!” Why was he shouting? Cas was right there, he could hear him just fine- “I’ve been playing you like a fucking fiddle! I could have torn into you from the start - but I didn’t because I knew you could ignore a demon. But not Dean, right? Not your Righteous Man you tore from Hell and Fell for and who is always so adorably tarnished and imperfect- you’d put up with a lot from him - you _have_. Well guess what? _That man you love is gone!_ It’s just _me!_ And I’m the whole package, baby! All the hate and the guts and the corruption! I was only playing up the halfway nice side to get into your head!”

“Yes. And you seemed to like it there.”

Dean’s breath rattled back into his lungs.

“I did not mind you there as much as I thought I would either,” Cas mused, one finger of his clasped hands unfolding to caress his lips thoughtfully. “I think this could work if you’d let it.”

Cas was looking at him. 

At _him_. Not like Sam and Crowley, looking for what they wanted to see. Cas really had been looking at him from the very beginning. _(I needed to know if I could stand-)_

...Cas was Team Free Will too. With a better grasp of how hard that could be when you hied from Heaven or Hell rather than having it built in by default. Having made his own blunders, he gave his fellow creatures a degree of latitude on that count; he tended to ignore the crusty exteriors and knee-jerk defensiveness, and judged people by their actions instead. Which was why he’d given latter day Meg a free pass despite her many faults and her cruel mouth, while Crowley, for all this oily offers of friendship and alliances, was now permanently in the angel’s penalty box. And Dean...

Okay. Fine. Dean was ready to grant that the ‘guardrail’ had allowed him to focus his efforts where it mattered rather than get distracted by old scores. Most of the grief he’d handed out initially had been in response to having the leash imposed in the first place. But beyond putting in the safety clauses, Cas hadn’t used the leash even once. He’d treated Dean as an equal, made him party to the invasion, and hadn’t forced him to do anything he didn’t want to. He’d given straight honest answers to all those barbed questions Dean had thrown his way. He’d listened to what Dean had to say in turn without trying to turn it into what what he wanted to hear instead. And now that he thought back on their road-trip, what would Dean have said or done differently if he hadn’t had that ‘mess with Cas’ plan? Really? Not much. Nothing that mattered. 

The words spoken, the choices made, the grudging respect that’d grown between them...that’s where Cas had found him again, found _Dean_. Back in the day, Cas had seen past the way Alastair had ripped Dean inside out, he’d seen past the steel that Purgatory’s crucible had poured into his veins, and now he was seeing past the Mark that’d blackened his eyes but still left him Dean in the end, just too stubborn to stop being himself. 

And Dean was looking right back. Looking at that calm expression and those feelings laid bare for him without any evasion or reserve, accepting that he could destroy them in just a few words. That righteousness that was no longer Holy but still wholly for him, that steel and that fire and that fury, that hope and that heart...human Dean clung to it, demon Dean wanted to confront it and claim it for his own, either way Dean knew with sudden clarity that he would never be able to look away from those blue eyes or get bored with what was behind them. Ever. Whatever shade his own eyes were. 

“So the seal will only be there to keep me from killing you or Sam if I’m having an off day, or slaughtering innocents-“

“You’d find that boring.”

Dean snorted. “You’re probably right. But if you decide you’re in on this crazy ride, halo, you can’t do things by halves. There’s going to be a lot of blood shed, and it won’t always be as clear cut as a bunch of hellbeasts. Besides, once those are buried, my real focus will be back on you. There’ll be good days, yeah, and there’ll be days when I wrap around you like concertina wire.”

Cas’s faint shrug said as clearly as his next few words: “I can handle it.”

“Yes you can.” His angel was fearless. And hell, it wasn’t as if original human Dean had always been that easy to live with.

There was a name for that: for the chain that still linked them together, that ran both ways and didn’t need no fucking magic symbols to operate. There’d been a thousand different ways their road trip to Hell could have gone down if it hadn’t been there. Since the chain was there, however, they’d chewed on each other like two junkyard mutts from time to time but when the chips were down, it had _clicked_. Clicked like goddamn. Clicked like being a second away from screwing each other right on the edge of the Pit, if Crowley didn’t have such a tragic sense of timing. Clicked like taking on armies and keeping even the rage of the Mark at bay for the sake of the other.

...Could that really work? Could Cas be his check and balance the same way that chick Collette had tempered the original father of murder? With the advantage that Cas was a million times harder to kill than some bad Scarlet O’Hara impersonator. 

Not that that had lasted. In the end, the Beast had been let out. There was always that chance that it would break free again, and Dean at least had the honesty not to lie about it.

His grin when he looked down at his lover was savage, pure and true. “You sure, angel? Because I'll make damn certain that heart of yours is mine forever...one way or a bloody other."

“That seems fair. Without you, Dean, I wouldn’t really have one in the first place,” Cas said with a small private smile that did not belong in church or anywhere holy. 

It fair took Dean’s breath away.

Finally Cas relaxed his pose, sitting back, hands sliding to Dean’s knees, that weird corner smile still on his mouth. “I don’t think it will come to that, even if the leash does slip,” he said wryly. “Like Israel, you’d rather wrestle with a live angel than step over the body of just another enemy.”

Dean’s smile curved appreciatively, but even though Cas was probably right on the money with that one, he still had to ask: “And if you’re wrong?” 

Cas seemed to consider that for a moment, then he nodded solemnly. “Even before all this happened, we did promise to stick together from now on. Plunge the Blade into my heart and I will do my best to take you with me.” 

Dean blinked. “What, pulverize me to atoms and hope it sticks?”

“Yes.”

“Even if you have to leave a hole in the ground the size of Tacoma?”

“I hope it won’t come to that, but if I have to stop you from-“

Dean stared at him, eyes widening. “Are you serious?”

“Yes-”

“Because that is such a major turn-on.”

Castiel gave his thousand yard stare an extra scrunchy twist around the eyes, but it seemed more indulgent than irritated. 

“So it’s just you and me riding that road through the centuries,” Dean mused, still unable to look away. “Occasionally clawing at each other and then licking our wounds and killing side by side, until Hell runs scared before us and Heaven can’t stand us and the monsters are all sent to Purgatory...or until we Thelma and Louise it off the Grand Canyon together.”

That earned him a puzzled head tilt which was as good a thing as any to carry off into the long night ahead.

Dean grinned. “I like it. Give me a kiss before I go, lover. One day I will be back.”

“One day yes,” said Cas, returning that smile, “but a very long time from now if I have anything to say about it.”

Then he surged forwards, grabbed Dean by the back of the neck and hauled him into a kiss to end ‘em all. Cas’s lips melded to his like they’d not come apart again unless cleaved by the Blade, and Cas’s tongue did something perfectly un-angelic and lewd that made Dean groan and then surge forward and counter and claim and _take_ \- he barely felt the needle stab him in the neck. 

The lips held his, firm and trying to distract him from the dark dreadful pain firing up his veins. Dean finally ripped his head away to scream. That wimp Sam ( _\- Sammy - his brother - his smart ever-suffering little brother -_ ) was pressing down on his chest so he wouldn’t seize so hard he’d snap his ribs against the restraints, and Cas was cradling his face and stopping his head from slamming into the chair as he convulsed.

And then the world exploded and dissolved into a brilliant white light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did mention this was a love story, right? This is me at my most romantic. I don't do dinner and candlelight, I do mutual death pacts (in fics, that is; don't call the police to go check on the well-being of my better half, he's fine.)
> 
> Nearly over, just a short epilogue to go.


	11. It Was Definitely Not Chess

Crowley had spilled his Islay. And it was the good stuff, too. Blimey, they’d said Dean’s cure had been rougher than the one Crowley had almost gone through. He thought Squirrel was just being a big pantywaist, but that had indeed looked nasty. If he’d known, he’d have recorded that final scream and looped it over the audio in the torturer’s chambers for added atmosphere.

Sam had one hand on his brother’s shoulder, Castiel was supporting his head. They were both silent for a heart-thudding moment. Then Castiel nodded faintly and Sam stepped back with a gasp of relief.

Castiel straightened up from the limp body. In the background outside the devil’s trap, Crowley was giving ‘debonair’ a good go, though he did not know how successful he was. Better than Sam who was red to the eyebrows and rubbing the back of his head, eyes flinching to and from his brother to the angel and back again.

“Cas, I- I’m sorry. I thought you just wanted to use him to kill Abaddon-...I should have known you had your reasons, but I-“

“I know, Sam,” said the angel with his small serious smile. “It was hard seeing him like this again. I know the temptation to cure him right away was overwhelming. Thank you for entrusting him to me.”

“I’ll puke up pea soup and spin my head around if this goes on,” Crowley snarled. “Did Moose and I really have to be here for this sickening display?”

Cas had turned to put the needle down on its nearby medical tray. He gave a hard stare back over his shoulder. “I don’t know, Crowley. Did you?”

“....What?”

Sam was glancing from one to the other. But Castiel did not elaborate.

“Sam, help me get him off of this chair and into bed.” Castiel waved his hand and the bondage implements fell away. He slipped Dean’s left arm around his neck and lifted him up off the chair. 

“Um...okay? But are you _sure_ -“

“His soul is cleansed, I can feel it. He’ll be more comfortable recovering in our room. We can leave the manacles on if you prefer.”

“Why am I helping you?” Sam asked with absolutely no indication in his body language that he minded lifting his brother’s other arm over his shoulder and taking half his unconscious weight. “You could carry him, the chair and a part of the floor too.”

“Yes, but the last time Dean was injured he let me know in no uncertain terms how much he hates the...‘bridal carry’? If he wakes up on the way, it will make him grouchy,” said Castiel with the faintest of loving smiles as Dean’s head lolled against his shoulder.

“You did all that for him - and for future him - you even raided Hell for him- yeah, you’re right, he’d still manage to be a little pissy about it. Come on then.”

They walked right by Crowley as if the King of Hell was a piece of furniture. Crowley glowered at their departing backs and then vanished. 

 

\---

 

Half an hour later, he was in his throne room. One hand trailed idly up and down the length of the harpoon planted near his throne. 

Hell was ticking around like well oiled clockwork around him. Trudy, his current favorite of the Crossroad hellhounds, came bounding into his throne room, but nobody else dared approach him until summoned. Which was how it should be.

Crowley’s fingers drummed against the harpoon’s shaft. He had to stay in Hell for awhile - much to his chagrin as he really did prefer Earth, but the last dangerous year had shown him that the couldn’t neglect his power base. 

That was what most of this hullabaloo he’d organized had been about, after all.

Finally he took a long look around, making sure he was unobserved. Then with a grumble he grabbed the harpoon, lifted it out of its stand, tapped it three times on the floor and spoke the release spell. Smoke billowed out of the tip, curling out of Abaddon’s mouth and nostrils for added effect.

“Go pull yourself together,” Crowley growled as the smoke flowed around, making the banners wave. “And I swear,” Crowley bellowed after it as it dodged down a corridor, “if you come back with a set of knockers again, I will rip them off and stuff them down your gob!”

Two minutes after the smoke disappeared, a tall cavernous man crept back into his presence, flickering and glimmering, a residual image rather than a meat suit. It failed to cover the chittering, skulking pile of ugly sadomasochism within. 

“Better,” Crowley grunted. “Now don’t give me that look, Father. I appreciate a good perversion same as the next King of Hell, but when you’re here with me, act professional. Save the sick stuff for your downtime.”

“Y-yes, Sire. I, um, see that your brilliant plan worked. Um...”

“You can’t get your red-headed houri’s body back.”

Father Calvo flinched. “N-no, sire. I never even _dreamed_ of- um-...”

He withered under Crowley’s glare. The seed of this plan had come about a few weeks ago when Crowley had wandered down to R&D, ignored a Do Not Disturb on a lab door out of royal prerogative, and nearly had a heart attack (however improbable that was for a demon) when coming face to face with Abaddon in a tank top and a horribly guilty expression all over her face. Calvo could put away the prude act, it had not been Crowley’s idea to repair and ride the red-head from hell. It _had_ been Crowley’s idea to capitalize on the notion. Though it had taken a considerable amount of persuasion and a lot of threats to get Calvo to play the part in public. 

Persuasion, threats and a bribe, Crowley remembered, watching Calvo bob and slither about like a dithering jellyfish, not quite daring to ask outright for his payment. 

“Right. Those Babel-era tomes you wanted. I did get them for you - courtesy of my own hard work and the angel’s. They’re in your lab. I had to leave their lead-lined box back at the bunker, though, so make sure you put the books away properly. Don’t go tearing holes in the real estate down here, Hell is a hard enough sell as it is. Consider that payment for your part in this little charade. Oh and while you’re at it -“ Crowley ripped the harpoon out of the stone and tossed it at Calvo. ”- fix this up with new spellwork and put it away safely. A soul capturing weapon could come in handy the next time I need a catch-and-release option.”

He closed his eyes. Opened them.

“You’re still here. Why are you still here?”

Calvo twiddled uncertainly with the harpoon. “You...seem displeased, sire. The Seal of Ephrasian did work as I- er, as we had theorized. The Hell Knight, the descendant of Cain, was under control.” 

“Sure. Break out the bubbly,” Crowley growled, giving Trudy a ruffle behind the ears. “That part of the plan worked. Now go away.” 

That part _had_ worked - and it was good to know that the one-day-future Knight of Hell and descendant of the father of murder was not going to be a complete loose cannon. That had been a bonus, really; the essential part of the plan had been about putting Abaddon’s head on a pike in front of a crowd of her supporters. Crowley had been instrumental to her death at Dean’s hands last year, of course, but most of Hell had found out he’d been nailed to the spot like a bystander when it’d gone down. And the blood addiction thing had gotten out. It had made him appear weak. There’d been grumbling in the ranks, especially among the brutes. Today’s little demonstration should now have quelled that. Crowley at the head of his army of three, roping in an angel and a Knight of Hell no less, raiding Hell to allow him to butcher his enemy mano a mano, all that. Crowley had always been good at PR.

It’d been touch and go at the end there. Calvo might be repellent, but Crowley was glad he’d safely harpooned that mad genius before either of the two terrors he’d unleashed upon Hell could kill the crazy bastard for real. He just wished he’d nabbed Calvo before Dean and Castiel had realized there’d been a switcheroo and that Abaddon had never been in play. Dean seemed to think Crowley had also been duped - annoying but better than the alternative. Castiel...who knew what the halo thought now. 

Crowley had expected Dean to be the problem. He’d had contingencies in case the Knight of Hell lost his rag and tried to kill him at the end there. Crowley hadn’t been in any immediate danger, he was a careful demon after all. But he’d expected Castiel to stop Dean for the sake of alliances and reason and all that. Or better yet, he’d hope Castiel would yank on Dean’s leash and they’d get into a fight. He’d expected them to rip shreds off each other at several stages of this bloody road trip. 

...That part of Crowley’s clever ploys had not gone as planned. It had even failed rather spectacularly. 

He’d wanted to break up the powerhouse those two represented since they’d hooked up. Instead, he had the nasty feeling he’d reinforced it in twists of steel chains and concrete, not only now but in the future when he should have legitimately been assured of an easy win. Truth was, he’d underestimated Feathers. And Dean. And that sickening bond between them. 

“What can I say,” he muttered, scratching the scaly hide between Trudy’s ears, “I laid out my pieces on the board, my Knight, my King, a tight-arsed Bishop, a big flannel-clad Queen and a whole lot of expendable pawns. It was perfect. Then it turns out we weren’t playing chess but a bloody game of strip poker where angels trump demons.”

Trudy’s abortive tail thumped the ground and she tried to eat his hand in a friendly kind of way.

Crowley threw her a bone (human tibia, reasonably fresh) and wandered away to go invent an entirely new kind of form filing using multi-spatial geometry with which to torture his subjects.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now I want to write a fic where Demon Dean and Cas hook up to fight crime! Or at least the British Men of Letters...


End file.
